In Virginia, a Marian shrine reaches back through 1,000 years of Christian history

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Williamsburg, Virginia, Sep 24, 2025 / 14:57 pm

“When you go on pilgrimage, hearts need to change. Something needs to change for a pilgrimage to be fruitful.”

That’s the message Sister Camilla Oberding, COLW, has for those who travel to the Marian Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in eastern England.

Sister Camilla was joined by two of her fellow sisters of the Community of Our Lady of Walsingham in Williamsburg, Virginia, on Sept. 24, with the nuns speaking at the U.S. National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham located in Virginia’s colonial-era capital city. Sister Camilla herself is the foundress of the English community.

The shrine in Williamsburg is part of a thousand-year history of Marian devotion dating back to rural England. The tradition endured centuries of repression and decline before a revival in the late 19th century saw a renewal of devotion to Mary in Walsingham — one that has extended to its sister shrine in Virginia, site of the first permanent English settlement in North America.

1,000 years of history

The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in England dates back to the 11th century, when, as tradition holds, the Blessed Mother appeared to the noblewoman Richeldis de Faverches and showed her a vision of the house in Nazareth at which the Annunciation took place.

Mary asked Richeldis to build a replica of the house in Walsingham; the house allegedly came together in a miracle one night while the noblewoman was in prayer, with the workmen at the site reportedly declaring the structure “flawlessly joined, and of a craftsmanship far superior to their own.”

A priory subsequently developed on the site; it was a place of holy devotion for several hundred years until the English Reformation under Henry VIII brought about its destruction.

The site fell into centuries of disuse after it was destroyed. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, the nearby Chapel of St. Catherine of Alexandria became the site of renewed devotion to the Walsingham apparition.

That church was long known as the “Slipper Chapel” as it represented the last stop on the ancient pilgrimage route to the Walsingham complex; pilgrims would remove their shoes to walk the last mile to the original Walsingham site. That chapel is now a national shrine and the Basilica of Our Lady of Walsingham.

Just over a mile north sits the remains of the old Walsingham priory. A cross in the grass marks the site of the 11th-century house built by Richeldis.

Lawrence OP via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The Williamsburg shrine, meanwhile, arose when the Virginia priest Father Thomas Walsh helped spearhead the dedication of a small chapel at the College of William and Mary to Our Lady of Walsingham in 1942.

Walsh may have earlier visited the English Walsingham site in the early 1930s during a trip to England; he was known in the U.S. to have a strong devotion to the apparition.

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Of architectural note in the chapel is a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, commissioned by Walsh from the sculptor Lillian Dagless, who designed many of the furnishings for the Walsingham Slipper Chapel. The design of the statue is based on the seal of the ancient priory.

Modern Walsingham community devoted to prayer, service

Sister Catherine Williams, who also made the trip to the Williamsburg shrine with her fellow nuns, said the community exists as an “ecclesial family of consecrated life.”

“We are dedicated to intensive prayer and intensive service,” she said. “We spend three hours a day in prayer. We also have the life of an apostolate. We run parish missions and engage in a broad range of apostolic work.”

There are plans to bring priests and brothers into the community as well, she said. The community also includes nearly a dozen lay adherents.

Sister Catherine described the small village of Walsingham as “a meeting place of so many denominations,” one that also features an Anglican-built recreation of the Marian holy house.

“The Anglicans ever-so-slightly beat us to it in setting up a major shrine,” Sister Catherine said with a laugh.

That site is richly ornate, she noted. “Going in there, you’d think it was Catholic,” she joked.

Sister Camilla said the Blessed Mother directed the building of the ancient holy house through Richeldis “so that everyone who goes there would be helped in their need.”

“God is using each of us to evangelize in today’s world. That’s what Walsingham is all about,” she said.

“We have to cultivate the graces we have received and grow in holiness each day,” she said. “We are called as Christians to say yes to God’s love from moment to moment each day.”

“If we did that, we would experience that joy that nothing else can give,” she said.

Daniel Payne is a senior editor at Catholic News Agency. He previously worked at the College Fix and Just the News. He lives in Virginia with his family.

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