marian anniversaries     june

Second Sunday in June

Our Lady of Sorrows, Prelate, Saskatchewan, Canada

Under Catherine the Great and into the 1800s, many Germans emigrated to the Russian Empire, setting up Protestant and Catholic settlements in what is now the Ukraine, Poland, Moldava, and Romania, in addition to Russia itself. Toward the end of the tsarist period, many of these still-German-speaking people emigrated once again, this time to the Americas.[1] 

In 1908, German-speaking Catholics from Bessarabia (in present-day Ukraine) settled in the Blumenfeld community, south of the present village of Prelate in western Saskatchewan. They built a church, completed in 1915 and dedicated to Sts. Peter and Paul.

Henry Kelz, of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, became pastor in 1931. On the grounds he build a grotto to Our Lady of Sorrows with fieldstone hauled by parishioners: not a cave replica, but a monument with an elevated niche for a Pietà statue.[2] 

In 1934, local Catholics decided the shrine should host an annual pilgrimage. They met with their bishop on August 5, 1935, asking him to set aside that date for the pilgrimage. Almost a year later, on June 22, 1936, the bishop agreed in a letter.[3] The first pilgrimage took place on August 5, 1936.

Now, although Sts. Peter and Paul no longer serves as a parish church, area Catholics make an annual pilgrimage to the grotto, not on a fixed date but usually on the second Sunday in June, with mass and a communal supper.[4]

Also celebrated this date: