Wonderful, Wacky World of Sightings

So the Catholic Church officially has approved the three apparitions of the heavenly Mary to a young immigrant woman in Champion, Wisconsin near Green Bay in the 1800s, the only appearance of Mary in the U.S. That's a surprise---I never had heard of those events at that place. I guess that Mary, after bearing the "majestic" titles of Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, etc., won't mind being called Our Lady of Champion. I can just imagine some commercial sponsors having a field day with that with the tourists there.

Rumors a few years ago were that Mary was appearing in a field at Tickfaw, Louisiana near Baton Rouge. But as I said then, I was certain that her apparitions weren't real, because I couldn't imagine her tolerating being called Our Lady of Tickfaw.

As far as I know, the only place in the U.S. where the Church has approved of an apparition by a saint (not Mary) is in the bucolic backwoods of Grand Coteau, also in Louisiana and also in the 1800s. There St. John Berchmann, who was an Englishman (of all things, not a Frenchman to match the Cajun French culture of that region), is said to have appeared to a dying nun. I said "dying," not "flying."