Grand Coteau: The Only Confirmed Miracle Site in the United States
Near Lafayette, Louisiana
The small town of Grand Coteau, Louisiana holds a distinction that no other place in the United States can claim: it is the only shrine in the United States standing at the exact location of a confirmed miracle. In eighteen sixty-six, a young novice named Mary Wilson arrived at the Academy of the Sacred Heart desperately ill, confined to the infirmary within weeks. The sisters began a novena praying for the intercession of Blessed John Berchmans, a seventeenth-century Jesuit scholastic not yet canonized as a saint.
On the ninth day of the novena, Mary Wilson reported that Berchmans appeared to her and placed his finger on her tongue. All signs of her illness vanished immediately. The Vatican investigated and confirmed the healing as a genuine miracle, the final miracle required for Berchmans to be declared a saint.
He was canonized in eighteen eighty-eight. The shrine at Grand Coteau still stands inside the Academy, open to visitors.
