After a rather frightening drive through the Ozark foothills (clearly no one in this area feels a need to place guardrails along the roadside), we reached our destination of the Black Madonna Shrine. The shrine was first built by Brother Bronislaus in 1927. He wanted to bring the highly revered Mary as our Lady of Czestochowa, or the Black Madonna, to the people of Saint Louis, since many people migrated to his hometown of Czestochowa to visit her shrine in his native country of Poland. The original chapel that he built was burned by arsonists in 1958, but many people still travel to see the new chapel area today and the grottoes that surround it, all built from Missouri tiff rock.
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