My first experience at the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio was unforgettable. The atmosphere, the stunning shrine church, and the general environment made me think I was at St. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec, Canada. This happened in 1968. I was just a new postulant in the first stages of my own formation as a friar. There at that time in Carey, I also discovered a dynamic fraternity of Conventual Friars serving not only local parishioners but also many pilgrims who were immigrants from faraway places I barely knew. All of this was new for a young 18-year-old searching for a way forward in his life.
Even at that point, I began to hear stories. Brother Bruno explained to me how the miraculous statute of Our Lady of Consolation was brought to Ohio by immigrants from Luxembourg. He also told me about the Franciscan friar Aloys Fish who in 1912 first knocked on the English Gothic Front Door of Fr. John Mizer’s new rectory. Friar Aloys had been sent, at the request of the Bishop of Toledo, to replace him. Little did friar Aloys know, that behind that English Gothic Front Door, still in use, only fourteen years later, a new province of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual would be born. However, he immediately got to work, and a magnificent new shrine church was basically completed in 1925.
In 1926, the vision of the Minister General that the Order in the United States should seek westward expansion was fulfilled. In the rectory, behind that English Gothic Front Door, a new province for the midwestern states was erected. It was formed from the earlier established Province of the Immaculate Conception, which served in New York State and the Eastern Seaboard.
At that very first chapter of the new province behind that Gothic Front Door, the choice of a name was easy: “Our Lady of Consolation.” Those first pioneer friars placed their new venture under the protection of Our Lady of Consolation. She became the starting point as friars moved into more parish and missionary ministry, placing both a new parish in Louisville and a new mission in Africa under her protection. The friars who followed were ever to remain pilgrims.
It was important to them that the first friars in the new province be educated behind that same English Gothic Front Door. However, in short order, that initial program was expanded into a new building, Our Lady of Carey Seminary, completed in 1935. This undergraduate philosophy program subsequently became affiliated with Dayton University, and the number of friar students increased, later drawing friars from other Conventual provinces. Then, in 1965 the seminary program moved to Saint Louis University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Over those thirty years, the combined presence of friars serving the parish and shrine, together with the faculty and students of the seminary, brought the number of friars at the Shrine to nearly one hundred. Conventual life flourished. Priest and Brother friars, worked together serving the many pilgrims who flocked to the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation. A notable number of those friars who served in Carey later provided leadership in the province and also in Rome, one even as Minister General, friar Basil Heiser, OFM Conv.
I, myself, am now serving in my eighth year as guardian, pastor, and rector in Carey. I am humbled as I learn more and more about my predecessors. The general environment still makes me think of St. Anne de Beaupre in Quebec, Canada. Here, as well as there, consistent ministry to pilgrims continues, mostly to new immigrants seeking new roots. Their consistent promotion of devotion to the Mother of God still heals souls and bodies.
Our Lady of Consolation, we thank you for calling so many of your sons, who have walked these grounds and served you so diligently in this holy place. May our memory of these 100 years in the service of Our Lord, Jesus Christ ever be blessed!
