Our Patron Saint is Jesus’ Mother, Mary.  Cardinal Stritch named our Church Our Lady of Humility to commemorate the Marian Year being celebrated in 1954.  The Cardinal’s choice of name also reflected his fondness for the “Our Lady of Humility Chapel” in the old North American College in Rome where he had completed his studies. Our Lady of Humility Window

Marian Years are decided on and declared exclusively by the Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church. In Church history, only two Marian Years were pronounced by Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II.  In 1953, with the encyclical Fulgens Corona, Pope Pius ordered a Marian Year for 1954, the first in Church history. The year was filled with Marian initiatives, in the areas of mariology, cultural events, charity, and social gatherings.

  • The principles of Christianity, which the Virgin Mother of God incited us to follow with eagerness and with energy, can be entirely and lastingly productive only when actually put into practice.

The Pope promoted appropriate sermons and discourses to explain Marian beliefs. The purpose was to increase the Faith of the people, and their devotion to the Virgin Mother. Marian Churches and Marian Shrines all over the world, “or at least an altar, in which the sacred image of the Blessed Virgin Mary is enshrined” should invite to public services the devotion of the Christian people. The Pope invites especially to celebrations at the Grotto of Lourdes, “where there is such ardent devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived without stain of sin.”