To pray at a saint's tomb
Where a holy man or woman is actually buried, prayer has somewhere to kneel. The tomb is not a monument to a career; it is the place the Church keeps a body until the resurrection.
Destinations · Saints, relics and devotion
Shrines give a devotion a place to stand.
A tomb, a reliquary, a monstrance, the grave of a founder. At a shrine the Church's memory stops being an idea and becomes somewhere a pilgrim can go, kneel, confess, and receive the sacraments.
What makes a shrine a shrine
A church gathers a community. A shrine draws pilgrims.
A shrine is known by the veneration that draws pilgrims to it. It may be a church, a chapel, a tomb, or a sanctuary inside a larger building; the form varies. Some keep the memory and the relics of a saint. Others carry a national or devotional mission within the life of the Church. What they share is a sacred focus: one thing at the center that the whole place is arranged around, and that people travel to be near.
Read that focus first and the rest of the visit falls into order: the altar, the reliquary, the tomb, the hours of adoration, the confession line, the grounds. Read it last and a shrine becomes a building with unusual furniture.
Why pilgrims come
Start where your reason starts.
For healing, reconciliation and intercession
Shrines gather intentions that are too heavy to carry alone. Confession is usually the center of that work, and the saint is asked to pray alongside the pilgrim, never instead of Christ.
To venerate relics
A relic is a witness, not a charm. Venerating one is an act of communion with a person who followed Christ in a real body, in a real century, and whose remains the Church has kept.
For Eucharistic prayer and adoration
At some shrines the Blessed Sacrament is plainly the center and every other devotion is ordered beneath it. These are places to sit still for an hour rather than to walk through.
To encounter a nation's Catholic witness
A national shrine is designated by the bishops of a country, which makes it a public act of memory: this is what the Church here wishes to hold before God and before its own people.
To enter the prayer of a religious community
Several shrines stand inside a living monastery or motherhouse. The pilgrim is a guest of a community that was praying before the visit and will be praying after it.
The shrines
Five places, and what stands at the center of each.
Washington, D.C.
Saint John Paul II National Shrine
Saint, relic and national shrine
National shrine
Sacred focus
A first-class relic of Saint John Paul II's blood, kept for veneration in an ornate reliquary, with the relics of six more saints set within the altar of Redemptor Hominis Church.
Why go
Pilgrimage to Saint John Paul II, relic veneration held together with sacramental prayer, and an exhibition that reads his life as a call to discipleship.
Detroit, Michigan
Solanus Casey Center
Saint, relic and devotional shrine
A saint's tomb
Relics venerated
Sacred focus
The tomb of Blessed Solanus Casey, Detroit's Capuchin doorkeeper, within the monastery complex where his hidden ministry of healing and reconciliation was carried out.
Why go
Prayer for healing and perseverance, regular confession, and the Capuchin simplicity that shaped a life spent answering the door.
Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana
Shrine of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin
Saint, relic and devotional shrine
A saint's tomb
Relics venerated
Sacred focus
The enshrined remains of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin, set within the living motherhouse of the Sisters of Providence she founded in 1840.
Why go
Prayer for courage, vocation and trust in Providence, on a campus where a saint's tomb and a community's continuing mission stand together.
Maria Stein, Ohio
Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics
Relic and devotional shrine
Relics venerated
Sacred focus
A relic of the True Cross at the center of a Relic Chapel holding more than 1,200 relics, most of them first-class, ordered around the Passion of Christ.
Why go
Relic veneration rooted in Catholic teaching, Eucharistic adoration, and a quiet way to find a patron among the communion of saints.
Hanceville, Alabama
Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament
Devotional shrine
Eucharistic shrine
Sacred focus
The Blessed Sacrament, exposed according to the shrine's schedule, beside the cloistered Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration; Mother Angelica is buried in the lower church.
Why go
Eucharistic adoration and confession, prayer for contemplative vocations, and a disciplined shrine day rather than a sightseeing stop.
Padua
Arcella Sanctuary
Saint and devotional shrine
Why go
Pilgrims following Saint Anthony
Padua
Sanctuary of Saint Leopold Mandić
Saint and relic shrine
A saint's tomb
Relics venerated
Why go
Confession and examination of conscience
How these shrines differ
What stands at the center changes from shrine to shrine.
The words below are the Church's, not a browsing taxonomy. A single shrine often answers to several of them at once: Saint John Paul II is national, saint-centered and relic-centered together.
- Saint-centered
-
The shrine exists because a particular holy person is remembered, and usually buried, here. Everything else on the site interprets that one life.
- Relic-centered
-
The sacred focus is what has been kept rather than who lies beneath: reliquaries, a fragment of the True Cross, the gathered witness of many saints at once.
- National
-
Designated by a country's bishops. The shrine carries a public, ecclesial role beyond the devotion of the people who happen to live nearby.
- Devotional
-
A particular practice of prayer gives the place its shape, whether or not a saint is buried there: adoration, the Rosary, a work of mercy, a Precious Blood heritage.
- Eucharistic
-
Not a separate category so much as a claim about the center: the Blessed Sacrament is the shrine's reason, and the saints and relics stand around it rather than in front of it.
Pilgrim practice
What pilgrims do here.
01
Mass
The shrine's own liturgy, not a service laid on for visitors. Times shift with feast days and seasons.
02
Confession
Regularly scheduled at every shrine here, and at several of them it is the reason people came.
03
Prayer at a tomb
Bring one named intention. Ask for help in a work that requires courage, and leave room for the next pilgrim.
04
Relic veneration
Approach a few witnesses slowly rather than counting a room. Begin with the Passion where a relic of the Cross is kept.
05
Eucharistic adoration
Scheduled or perpetual, depending on the shrine. It is what keeps every other devotion in its right place.
06
Prayer for healing
Named intercession for the sick, the estranged, and the exhausted, offered through a saint's prayers.
07
The community's prayer
Where a monastery or motherhouse keeps the hours, a visitor may often join the public part of it.
08
Reading the place
Exhibitions, heritage rooms and grounds interpret the shrine. They serve the prayer; they do not replace it.
Schedules move with the liturgical year, retreat seasons and community life. Every shrine on this page publishes its own; check it before you travel.
Where they are
Five American shrines.
Select a shrine to place it, or open its guide from the list.
Build a day around one sacred place.
Save a shrine as you read, and the visit keeps its shape: the tomb or the reliquary at the center, Mass and confession around it, and whatever else is near enough to reach without hurrying.
Photo credits
- A monumental mosaic of Christ with saints and angels in the Saint John Paul II National Shrine. Andrea Hanks / The White House, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. Public Domain.
- Saint John Paul II National Shrine. ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY 4.0. Cropped or resized derivative.
- Solanus Casey Center. Saint Bonaventure Monastery 2. Andrew Jameson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped or resized derivative.
- Shrine of Saint Mother Theodore Guerin. Church of the Immaculate Conception (Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana), exterior, front. Nheyob, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped or resized derivative.
- Maria Stein Shrine of the Holy Relics. Shrine of the Holy Relics (Maria Stein, Ohio) - interior, The Relic Chapel. Nheyob, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 3.0. Cropped or resized derivative.
- Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Carol M. Highsmith, public domain, via Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons. Source. Public Domain. Cropped or resized derivative.
- Arcella Sanctuary. luciobocchi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped or resized derivative.
- Sanctuary of Saint Leopold Mandić. Marcok, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 4.0. Cropped or resized derivative.