Catholics turn to Mary and saints amid Los Angeles wildfires

Several Catholics who have fled the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles have been praying for the intercession of Our Lady of Champion, who once saved a rural Wisconsin shrine from a devastating inferno.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, Catholics with connections to that shrine are praying for Mary to grant Angelenos another miracle now.

Father Tony Stephens, a member of the Fathers of Mercy and rector of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Champion near Green Bay, offered Mass Jan. 10 for intentions related to the Los Angeles fires. He prayed for an end to the fires and for rain, for people’s safety, for firefighters and police, for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and “for people to quit pointing fingers right now” in blame, he told OSV News.

Our Lady of Champion honors Mary’s 1859 apparition to Adele Brise, an illiterate Belgian immigrant in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. In 1871, Brise led prayers of protection against the Great Peshtigo Fire, the most devastating fire in U.S. history to date, which killed as many as 2,400 people and burned 1.2 million acres. As the fire approached the village of Champion, the area’s farm families, some with their cattle, sought refuge with Brise and her companions in a chapel built to honor the apparitions. Together they processed in prayer around the sanctuary as fire scorched the grounds’ perimeter fence but did not cross the boundaries.

The next day it rained. Those who sought refuge were saved, which many attributed to Mary’s intercession.

In addition to praying to Our Lady of Champion, Father Stephens said he is appealing for the intercession of Brise, whose cause for canonization is being discerned, as well as St. Swithin, a ninth-century English saint and former bishop of Winchester known to ward off drought.

On July 9, the shrine publicized a version of its prayer to Our Lady of Champion that included an appeal for an end to the Los Angeles fires. On Relevant Radio’s live Family Rosary Across America radio program Jan. 10, its leader Father Rocky Hoffman also called on Mary’s intercession for an end to the wildfires under that specific title.

Several wildfires have been raging in Los Angeles since Jan. 7, spread by tremendous winds and affecting multiple areas. The Palisades, Eaton and Hurst fires have destroyed roughly 60 square miles. At least 24 people are dead, with many others missing. Evacuations have been ordered for more than 92,000 Los Angeles County residents.

Historically, many saints have been asked to intercede against fire. St. Florian, a third-century Roman, is the patron saint of firefighting, as one legend says he saved a village from fire using only a bucket of water. St. Catherine of Siena is also a saint for fire prevention, as she was engulfed in a kitchen fire while deep in prayer, but her sister pulled her to safety unscathed. St. Barbara is also invoked for death against fire or electricity.

There are also historic patrons of several areas threatened by the Los Angeles fires, originally named for Catholic saints by Spanish explorers and settlers, such as the city of Santa Monica, which has issued mandatory evacuation orders for some neighborhoods due to the encroaching Palisades Fire. Mary’s mother, St. Ann, is the likely namesake of the dangerous Santa Ana winds that are making the fires so difficult to contain.

While it may seem natural for residents of the City of Angels to call upon their guardian angels for all needed aid against the fires, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has another, albeit more obscure, patroness: St. Vibiana, whose tomb is in the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

A third-century virgin and martyr, St. Vibiana was buried in Roman catacombs along the Appian Way. Her tomb was rediscovered in 1853. According to the cathedral’s website, Pope Pius IX gave the relics to Bishop Thaddeus Amat, who had recently been appointed to the Diocese of Monterey, California — which at that time included Los Angeles — with orders he build a cathedral in her honor.

The cathedral was completed in 1876 and was named St. Vibiana in her honor, but after it sustained significant damage in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the archdiocese decided to build a new cathedral, Our Lady of the Angels, and St. Vibiana’s relics were moved to its crypt. (The original, deconsecrated cathedral was eventually restored and opened as an event venue.)

St. Vibiana’s relics also reportedly survived a church fire in Santa Barbara, where they were interred while funds for the cathedral were being raised.

Although popular devotion to the saint has waned, some Catholics have made efforts to revive it, especially through a Los Angeles-based organization named Gaudent Angeli. On Jan. 11, its leaders sent out an appeal to St. Vibiana via email with a prayer, ending with “Save us, and your city which the Divine Bridegroom entrusted to you!”

Paul de Partee, a Catholic convert, co-founded Gaudent Angeli with two others during the COVID-19 pandemic. He is encouraging Catholics to call upon St. Vibiana, even though he thinks of her as a “modest” saint who does not seek attention.

He noted, however, that her relics were discovered on the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, another saint dear to many Angelenos.

“St. Vibiana has been present in Los Angeles since its founding, at least as a diocese,” he said. “We should be praying for her intercession for the fire because she is intimately connected to Los Angeles and cares not just about the Catholics, but every person living there and lives to intercede all the time.”

Father Stephens said Catholics should take seriously the possibility of a miracle.

“I’m absolutely praying for that,” he said, adding that until the fires are extinguished, “we’ll certainly keep it in our petitions.”

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