Part I
(LifeSiteNews)— A Marian shrine is a pilgrimage location for Catholics and other Christians who are not averse to Catholic devotion to the mother of Jesus. These are not necessarily locations where alleged apparitions have taken place. Of those, there are only about 20 worldwide that have been approved, the most famous ones in Lourdes and La Salette in France, Fatima in Portugal, Mexico City, and Knock in Ireland.
America has many regional Marian shrines, some of which brought papal visits to Pennsylvania and Colorado. Wisconsin has three shrines, and its most recent is not far from Green Bay, which is the only one in the U.S. where the Church has approved an apparition of Mary.
But there are many shrines, nationwide and worldwide. This essay will call attention to Beauraing, Belgium in 1932-33, where the Blessed Virgin appeared, and a state where there may be a future shrine: Alaska.
Like almost all frontier zones, Alaska has never been a territorial entity with a profound depth of Christian faith. There were exceptional efforts made by Russian Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant missionaries, whose legacy is still influential today, but they failed to impress the overall culture of this vast state.
Alaska, like the other Pacific northwest states, has been devoid of a strong Christian influence. It legalized abortion in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, and today it is inundated with marijuana shops. It has long tolerated alcoholism and sexual libertine values. Baptists and evangelical denominations currently hold sway throughout the populated road system of the state, and they have resisted the cultural zeitgeist better than other denominations.
The workings of the heavenly forces that Alaskan Catholics have longed for may just now be making an appearance. Our patroness is the popular and influential Doctor of the Church St. Therèse of Lisieux, and a shrine in her honor exists in Juneau. But Mary’s presence in this still underpopulated and frontier state has not been felt.
At many shrines, one often finds spartan and clean lodgings on the campus, with secular restaurants and lodgings usually nearby. There are cafeteria services, Mass, confessions, lectures, and daily devotions, all in a rural and garden-like setting. At most shrine locations, an outdoor Stations of the Cross, inspiring vistas, and hiking trails make for a wonderfully religious “time out” for families, the elderly and others seeking spiritual guidance.
And all have a record of miraculous cures. Many are merely claimed, with gratitude manifested through contributions, a renewed spiritual life and repentance. Most of them are not investigated in the way that would satisfy a skeptic, but some are.
Talkeetna, Alaska would make a grand location for a Marian shrine. Lifelong Talkeetna resident Renamary Rauchenstein, an administrator for the small St. Bernard’s parish, says that the town receives about 250,000 visitors a year, mostly crammed in between May 1 and September 30. Founded as a whistle-stop along the railroad in 1917, it experienced a hardscrabble homesteading element in the 1950s and a drug-culture influx from the 60s.
Since then, Talkeetna has been transformed into a premier destination for cruise ship tourism heading to Denali National Park, with travel from charter busses and the romantic Alaska Railroad. In winter there are plenty of snow-machiners and backcountry skiers. It is 100 miles from Anchorage and 250 from Fairbanks. In summer, the central square is jam-packed daily with tourists visiting curio shops, bars, restaurants, blue-grass music and outdoor gear. Cruise ship hotels await those who want to take their Alaskan vacation in luxury.
The train depot is busy, as well as the local airport, where many splurge their vacation money to view the hair-raising subsidiary peaks of the Denali/McKinley massif from a small plane. Powerboat excursions take visitors on long river tours deep into the wilderness. And for decades, Talkeetna has been the staging area for serious climbers of North America’s highest peak.
In this touristy mix there will be devout Catholics; they will be delighted to discover that Talkeetna has been touched by a miracle. But first, we will investigate an approved Marian apparition, located in Beauraing, Belgium, and then learn of its connection to Alaska.
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The history of approved Marian apparitions is populated by seers who are innocents. Many are children, but some have been adults. The locations have usually been in rural areas and small towns. Belgium twice suffered war-time occupation in the 20th century, and that may be why it was chosen for the numerous apparitions at Beauraing in 1932.
One afternoon after school, five children saw the Blessed Virgin Mary processing across a railroad bridge. They immediately understood this to be something unwordly and ran to the nearby convent. A nun answered the door and later admitted that she also saw the vision. Frightened, she closed the door after the children’s appeals.
Next day, the vision alighted in a hawthorn tree in the convent’s back courtyard. As with all apparitions, it is the common folk who spread the word and enlarge the rumors that always disturbs the local Catholic parish and the diocesan bishop. There must be episcopal doubts because the Church would look foolish if it immediately approved any claimed Heavenly vision.
The local nuns and their Mother Superior were not happy with the children’s repeated prayers and kneeling before the hawthorn tree and ordered them out of their courtyard. However, the tree was right up against the fencing, so when the vision reappeared the next day, the children knelt in the adjacent sidewalk. This frustrated the Mother Superior, who let loose two dogs to discourage their return. They were snarling and vicious, but the nun knew that, thanks to the fence, they could only intimidate the children.
Our Lady must like dogs, because they play a part in both Belgium and Alaska. The irascible nun became convinced that something supernatural might truly be afoot, when the dogs instantly joined the children and lay down flat in complete submission before the tree.
The messages of Our Lady of Beauraing typify her other appearances, which always emphasize a renewal of faith, along with requests for prayer, penance, and sacrifice. They lacked the dire warnings of La Salette or Fatima, however. As usual, her physical appearance changed to reflect the culture of the seers, who reported that she was young, slender, incomparably graceful and beautiful, and manifested a golden heart in the center of her breast.
Thus, she has also become entitled Our Lady of the Golden Heart, and statuary based upon the seers’ description was soon produced, when the visions were declared worthy of belief in 1943.
George Herter was an American GI who came to liberate Belgium in 1944. Like many American soldiers throughout Europe, the decorated officer fell in love and married a devout Catholic girl. His wife was named Berthe Charleroi. After the war George and Berthe came to the U.S. in separate troopships, which was usual military policy.
By then they already had an infant son, Jacques, and Berthe found herself in a tremendous crisis: a mysterious case of diarrhea broke out aboard ship, the SS Brazil. Two other ships were coming into New York with children who had the exact same symptoms. The SS Zebulon Vance had ten children aboard who eventually died. The two children aboard the Brazil, Jacques and another, were dehydrated and at high risk.
An Army medical board determined that sanitation protocols were properly followed by the medical officer on the Brazil. According to some opinions quoted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Army may have made the mistake of not customizing the infants’ formulas.
Once landed, Berthe raced her son to a Catholic hospital in Pittsburgh where her husband met her. There she placed a small leaf, taken from Beauraing’s famous hawthorn tree, under Jacques’ pillow … which, by some reports, almost instantly cured her son! It ought to be noted that the newspaper mentioned that the Herter baby arrived on a Thursday, but was discharged on the following Tuesday, a sign that the recovery was complete.
Newspaper reports extolled the virtues of the physicians at St. Francis Hospital without mentioning the leaf from Beauraing. But, as if Heaven wanted us to notice, the other child, who was treated according to the same emergency procedures as Jacques — but without the benefit of the hawthorn tree relic — died.
This miraculously cured infant later became Dr. Jacques (“Jack”) Herter, a clinical psychologist. In an interview in 2025, he explained that, like all of us, his father was a flawed human being. Although the elder Herter died in 1994, to this day his presence is noted on the internet, and he enjoys a cult following as an author. His books included outdoor stories and practical advice, some of which were colorful and useful, others which were outright lies and ribald tall tales. Dr. Jack said that his father was bi-polar, manipulative and often cruel, but also like all of us, he was capable of both noble and ignoble acts.
In gratitude for the miraculous healing of his son, and in order to spread devotion to the Blessed Virgin of Beauraing, George Herter commissioned a group of fifty statues, over three feet in height, of Our Lady of the Golden Heart. They were based on the already existing statue in Belgium, which was crafted according to the five seers’ descriptions and fashioned from aluminum. Within each one, Herter placed a twig from the hawthorn tree—or so he claimed. Dr. Jack is not sure if his father was being truthful, but the statues were accompanied by a brass plaque that said so, and one is still posted with the statue in Talkeetna. The statues found their way to various parishes and convents, but over the years most have been lost or deliberately retired. Known survivors are mostly in Minnesota, but one made its way to Utah and another to Alaska. This last was from Herter’s home parish in Waseca, Minnesota, easily identifiable by its missing hand.
Just how it came to Alaska is a mystery still to be solved. But it was discovered, alone and forgotten, in a closet at the parish in Big Lake, Alaska. Perhaps it was taken there miraculously. After all, if the Holy House of Loreto can be transported, why not a statue?
Located 60 miles from Anchorage, Big Lake is a fast-growing bedroom community, spread out for miles amidst forests of spruce and birch, about 50 miles from Talkeetna. The pastor at Big Lake suggested that Talkeena’s St. Bernard parish could use an outdoor statue of the Blessed Virgin, and so it has been located there since the 1980s. There, the statue of Our Lady of the Golden Heart stood, underneath a well-built log shelter, cemented atop a pile of rocks, waiting for those in need and those with faith.
In Part II, we will learn about the Paul family: Eric, Andrea, and their son Bruce, who has a lot in common with Dr. Jacques Herter.
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