Chicago is one of America’s most popular tourist destinations, ranked as the Best Big City in the U.S. six years in a row by Conde Nast magazine. The city is massive but within this sprawling metropolis there are some fantastic pilgrimage destinations. The city was home to three current and future saints, gave birth to two devotions that have since spread across the nation, and hosts several shrines that bring to life the stories of some of the greatest saints and miracles in our Catholic heritage.
The great shrines of Chicagoland
A trip to Chicago can easily be built around the region’s fantastic shrines. Most notable is the Shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe, located just outside of O’Hare Airport in Des Plains. This is the second largest pilgrimage site in the world dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, second only to the shrine in Mexico City. It draws close to 300,000 pilgrims for the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe each December 12th.
The expansive grounds, modeled on Tepayic Hill in Mexico City where the Virgin appeared to St. Juan Diego, are centered around a large waterfall and a 12 foot statue recreating the Guadalupe apparition. There is also a full digital reproduction of the miraculous tilma of St. Juan Diego. It is traditional among Hispanic Catholics to fulfill a “manda” if a prayer or favor is granted after seeking the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The “manda” entails making a pilgrimage to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. For the poor, infirm and many migrants in the United States who are unable to make the trip across the border, they can fulfill the “manda” obligation in Des Plaines and still receive the same graces as they would have at the Basilica in Mexico City. It is the only shrine in the world with this privilege outside of Mexico City.
At the other end of Chicagoland, about 25 miles south in Darien is the National Shrine and Museum of St. Therese of Lisieux. Filled with relics and mementos, it is the largest collection of the saint’s personal effects outside of France. The museum also has a complete replica of her convent cell and a collection of statues of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel from around the world. Mass is offered daily at the shrine. The Carmel grounds are open to visitors, with its formal gardens, fountains, grottos, and Stations of the Cross.
The third great shrine in ChicagoLand is the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe, located at a Franciscan Friary located about 40 miles north in Marytown, close to the Six Flags Great America amusement park. The shrine recalls the heroic witness of St. Maximilian Kolbe: imprisoned in Auschwitz for giving shelter to 3,000 Polish prisoners during the Second World War, he offered to trade his life for that of a husband and father who was scheduled to be executed. He was also renowned prior to the war for setting up the Militia Immaculata, to counter the Masonic and other evil influences spreading across Europe after the First World War.
The shrine is set on beautiful grounds that include the historic Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, filled with stained glass, mosaic, marble, and where there is perpetual adoration. Inside is the Kolbe Chapel, which contains his first class relics for veneration. There is also a Holocaust museum with a full scale replica of Kolbe’s cell and displays on both the Holocaust and on the life of St. Maximlian.
Even before Maximilian Kolbe was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Marytown played a historic role in the life of the church in Chicago. In 1926, the city hosted the 28th International Eucharistic Congress; the first time the Eucharistic Congress was held in America. The fourth and final day was held on the grounds of Marytown, including a massive outdoor Eucharistic procession and benediction at the site by the lake where the cupola still stands.
Saints in the city
Entering downtown Chicago, you are entering a metropolis that has been sanctified by the hands of many holy men and women who adopted this city as their own. Foremost among them was the tireless evangelist to the city’s immigrants, St. Francis Xavier Cabrini. She frequented Chicago, first arriving in 1899, and opened many schools and hospitals, and ultimately died in the city. She was so beloved by Chicagoans that over 100,000 faithful gathered at Soldier Field to commemorate her canonization.
In 1903, St. Cabrini purchased an abandoned hotel in present-day Lincoln Park, turning it into Columbus Hospital. The small room in which she lived, and died in 1917, has now been preserved and is at the center of the National Shrine of St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. The main chapel of the shrine includes a papal altar with an exposed relic of the saint’s arm, and the church is lined with beautiful stained glass windows depicting the mysteries of the rosary, events in the life of the saint, the popes that touched her life, and other saints that she was closely devoted to.
While in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, be sure to visit the city’s popular (and free) Lincoln Park Zoo, the Chicago History Museum (where children can literally dive into a life size Chicago style hot dog), the Lincoln Park Conservatory and the lush trails of the namesake park that defines the neighborhood.
Bronzeville
The Bronzeville neighborhood is the historic home of Chicago’s African American community, and has historically been considered as the city’s “Black Metropolis.”
It is lined with many art galleries, cultural attractions and tasty soul food eateries, as well as poignant monuments to seminal events in the history of Black Chicago, including the fifteen foot cast bronze Monument to the Great Migration (commemorating the northward migration of African Americans from the South), the Victory Monument celebrating the contribution of local African American reservists to decisive battlefield victories in World War I, and the Bronzeville Walk of Fame, the ten block memorial to over 90 famous Black Chicagoans.
It is impossible to speak of the African American legacy of Chicago, without recalling a future saint who walked these streets and ministered to the early Black Catholic community in the city: the Venerable Augustus Tolton, the country’s first African American priest. He was born a slave, endured a heroic escape from the south with his mother at a young age, and ended up being educated for the priesthood in Rome because no seminary in the country would take a Black student at the time. Upon his return to Quincy as a priest, he encountered pretty systemic racism and was eventually requested to leave the diocese by the bishop. The Archbishop of Chicago invited Fr. Tolton to come to Chicago and take charge of a downtown ministry to the city’s small black community. He went on to initiate construction of the city’s first church for Black Catholics, St. Monica’s, at 36th and Dearborn Streets, not far from the Bronzeville neighborhood. He died at the young age of 41 on July 9 1897, collapsing during a heatwave shortly after returning to the city from a priest’s retreat.
Unfortunately, there are no artifacts remaining from his time in Chicago. As the postulator of his cause remarked, this is a reflection of the sad realities of the time in which Fr. Tolton lived: who, other than his parishioners, would have thought that a Black priest in Chicago would ever be put on the path to canonization?
The best that the modern day pilgrim can do is to walk in the footsteps of this incredible priest. This walk can begin at the Tolton Heritage Center, located at the old St. Elizabeth Parish site at the corner of 41st & South Michigan Avenue. This stands over the site of the former St. Monica parish, where Fr. Tolton had served as pastor. The Church building has bas-reliefs of Tolton and St. Katherine Drexel, with whom he corresponded, on the outside of the building. A short walk away is the the parking lot at the Cardinal Meyer Center/Archdiocese of Chicago Pastoral Center (3525 S Lake Park Avenue), where there once was the 35th Street train station where Tolton disembarked on July 9, only to collapse a few steps away at 36th & Ellis Street. He was rushed to nearby Mercy Hospital where he succumbed later that same evening – this hospital is still in operation.
Little Italy
Chicago’s trendy Near West Side, home to the campus of the University of Illinois-Chicago and the charming Little Italy neighborhood. It can easily be combined with a visit to the sites around Chicago’s Museum Campus – the Adler Planetarium (America’s first planetarium), the Field Museum of Natural History, and the Shedd Aquarium, or a trip up the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower).
In the heart of Little Italy is a fairly unique Chicago church, the Shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii. It is the oldest continually active Italian-American parish in Chicago, established by the Scalabrini fathers sent to America to minister to the burgeoning Italian population.
The church has stunning bronze doors with panels depicting all twenty mysteries of the Rosary, as well as a lovely shrine to Blessed Bartolo Longo.
Blessed Bartolo Longo was raised a cradle Catholic in a wealthy southern Italian family, but gradually fell away from his faith and ended up becoming a Satanist high priest. He was eventually saved by a Dominican priest who re-introduced him to the rosary and brought him back to Christ. Bartolo completely renounced his Satanist past and together with an Italian noblewoman he married, devoted a considerable amount of effort to promoting the rosary, to the point that St. John Paul II labeled him the “Apostle of the Rosary.” He also financed and built a shrine to Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii that includes a miraculous painting of Our Lady of the Rosary that was found in a junk shop in Naples and restored.
Southern Italians settling in Chicago brought this special devotion with them and faithfully re-created the Pompeii shrine in the heart of Little Italy, including a recreation of the miraculous painting above the high altar. The Shrine contains a significant relic of Blessed Bartolo, donated in 2004 by the prefect of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompeii.
Chicago’s Polish Cathedrals
Across the north end of Chicago, there is wonderful concentration of ornate churches, often described as Chicago’s “Polish cathedrals,” spread across these neighborhoods; their steeples can easily be spotted driving along the Kennedy Expressway. Any of these churches will leave you feeling as though you were far away in another land and time, with their resplendent sanctuaries, ornate altars, and masterful stained glass windows and paintings. They are a short distance from some of the city’s iconic attractions, including the world famous Magnificent Mile, John Hancock Center, Millennium Park and the Navy Pier.
St. Stanislaus Kostka Church
The story of this collection of “Polish cathedrals” begins with the mother church of the Polish Catholic community in Chicago, St. Stanislaus Kostka Church, established in 1867. By the 1890s, the parish had reportedly grown to become the largest parish in the United States, serving over 40,000 people through 12 masses each Sunday. The magnificent church is also Chicago’s Divine Mercy sanctuary, centered around the beautiful monstrance of Our Lady of the Sign-Ark of Mercy, which is used for 24/7 adoration at the parish. The monstrance depicts Mary in her glorified state, holding the exposed Blessed Sacrament, the ultimate sign of God’s mercy.
One of the immigrants who settled in Chicago and was a parishioner of St. Stanislaus was a young Polish girl, now universally recognized as the Venerable Mary Theresa Dudzik; Chicago’s “Apostle of Mercy.” In 1894, following the 1893 financial crisis that devastated Chicago, she formed a new religious community – the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago – to care for the elderly. From that time, until her death in 1918, she worked tirelessly – mending linens, washing and ironing clothes, sewing clothes, taking care of priests – to raise money to put toward the care of the elderly and poor. The Franciscan Sisters of Chicago continue this elderly care to the present day. You can visit the tomb of Venerable Maria Theresa Dudzik, as well as an exhibition on her life, at the Order’s Motherhouse, the Our Lady of Victory Convent in the Chicago suburb of Lemont.
Many notable “Polish Cathedrals” anchor neighborhoods like Avondale and Bucktown that the Kennedy Expressway bisects. One outstanding church is St. Mary of the Angels, with its 26 angel statues rising from its roof and an ornate interior is modeled on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Another is St. Hyacinth Basilica, with its marvelous bronze doors and imposing dome rising high above the altar. The future pope Karol Woylyla celebrated mass in this basilica in 1966 and today it houses some of his relics, including his skull cap and a vial of his blood. St Hedwig’s, named after the thirteenth century Queen of Poland, is also quite stunning, with its marble columns, gold leaf altar and masterfully crafted stained glass windows and paintings.
Perhaps the most memorable of all these Polish churches is St. John Cantius Church, located precisely one mile west of the Magnificent Mile, in Chicago’s River West neighborhood. The church’s cornerstone was laid in 1893, built in the opulent style of eighteenth century Krakow. It is renowned for its traditional sacred music, with choral and orchestral mass settings, and also offers mass in the extraordinary form daily. Among the church’s greatest treasures is its icon of “Our Lady of Chicago.” It is actually an icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa, which was brought from Poland over a century ago and has been centre of religious devotion at the parish. It was re-crowned by Pope St. John Paul II in 1997, at which time the Holy Father christened the icon as “Our Lady of Chicago.” On the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows in 1997, there was a solemn re-christening ceremony to re-dedicate the parish to Our Lady for the third millennium.
Chicago: The launch pad of national devotions
Finally, it is worth reflecting on the role that local devotions that started in Chicago have had in shaping the American Catholic experience.
About two miles from the popular Garfield Park Conservatory, is Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica, filled with lovely sanctuary murals and floor mosaics. It was at this church that the Novena to Our Lady of Sorrows originated in 1930s and spread nationwide, recited every Friday since 1937. The church doubles as the National Shrine to St. Peregrine, the patroness of those afflicted by cancer. Operated by the Servite priests, the church contains the relics of several Servite saints as well as a full size replica of Michaelangelo’s Pieta.
On the south side is one of the city’s most famous shrines, the Claretian Shrine of St. Jude inside the Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This was the first parish established to support the Mexican community in Chicago, who came in increasing numbers to work the city’s steel mills. The first Claretian priest to serve as pastor had a particular devotion to St. Jude, the apostle and patron saint of hopeless causes. The devotion to St. Jude grew out of this very church and rapidly spread across the United States. To this day, many faithful from across the country mail in their petitions to be placed inside the shrine altar and offered at daily mass. The shrine, located just to the right of the sanctuary, is dominated by a statue of the great saint and first class bone relics.
Before you leave town: the Little Village
A trip to Chicago would not be complete without a stop in the Little Village. This neighborhood is one of the largest and most intriguing Mexican centers in the Mid West. It is lined with fantastic cafes, traditional stores, and traditional performers.
One of the best known restaurants in the neighborhood, particularly renowned for the Chilaquiles breakfast dish, is La Catedral Cafe. The reason it is being singled out in this article is that the interior of the cafe is lined with Catholic art and treasures, giving you an opportunity to dine on authentic Mexican food while surrounded by antique crucifixes, Catholic art and many statues of Our Lady.
CATHOLIC CONCIERGE 
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