Cardinal Burke has announced the launch of Messengers of Our Lady (Our Lady’s Messengers), a new apostolate based at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin. According to National Catholic Register, the program seeks to gather the faithful under the protection of the Virgin Mary, fostering prayer, conversion, reparation, and the sustenance of the shrine’s evangelizing mission.
The project invites the faithful to make a monthly offering, both spiritual and economic, which will be integrated into the shrine’s pastoral and catechetical work. As Cardinal Burke explained, the shrine has been for more than 25 years a place where “hearts are transformed by encountering Christ through Mary.” With this new apostolate, it seeks to expand that mission and multiply its reach.
The initiative is aimed at Catholics who wish to join more closely to the life of the shrine and the mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe, offering their prayers and personal sacrifices in communion with the pastoral work carried out there.
Spiritual and Material Objectives
Burke has detailed that the program pursues three fundamental goals:
- Unite the prayers and sacrifices of the faithful with the shrine’s evangelizing and catechetical mission.
- Provide economic support for the spiritual and material infrastructure, ensuring it can welcome pilgrims and grow in its pastoral capacity.
- Foster spiritual reparation, to counter what the cardinal identifies as confusion, division, and loss of faith in the Church and the world.
“Being messengers of Our Lady implies a life of conversion, penance, and apostolate, not just a passive devotion”
A Response to the Faith Crisis
Cardinal Burke placed this launch in a context of spiritual urgency. In his view, the Church is going through a time of grave doctrinal confusion, faith crisis, and internal divisions, while the world is dominated by secularist and globalist ideologies that seek to marginalize the Christian faith.
In the face of this situation, the cardinal calls on Catholics to return decisively to Mary, as he believes that under her guidance lies the sure path to restoring the life of faith and unity in the Church. Marian devotion, he states, is not an accessory, but an essential instrument for conversion and salvation.
An Invitation from Cardinal Burke
Burke concludes by inviting the faithful to be “one” with him in the mission of Our Lady of Guadalupe, participating actively in the apostolate of prayer, sacrifice, and conversion. “Our Lady calls us with urgency; it is time to respond with generosity and faith,” he stated.
With the Messengers of Our Lady, the cardinal intends for the shrine not to be merely a place of pilgrimage, but a living center of spiritual renewal amid the crisis the Church is going through.