The Parish of Our Lady of Sorrows was founded in 1874 by three Servants of Mary (Servites): Fathers Austin Morini and
Andrew Venturi, and Brother Joseph Camera. The Bishop of Chicago, Right Reverend Thomas Foley, enthusiastically approved their dream of a sanctuary where the Blessed Virgin could comfort her people and honor her Divine Son.
Within that first year, a plot of farmland was acquired on the city’s far West Side, and a brick church was built. It was 102 feet long, 38 feet wide, and two stories high. Midnight Mass was held inside on Christmas Eve, 1874. In the following year, the little church, on the site of today’s Servite monastery, was beautifully frescoed.
Soon a much larger church was needed, and on June 17, 1890, ground was broken for the Italian Renaissance-style church we see
today. The building was opened for Masses within months, under a temporary roof, while the walls had reached only half of their eventual height. It was not until January 5, 1902, that the great church could be dedicated.
When improvements were made to the lower church, Father James M. Keane compiled a booklet of prayers to be used in a new service that would take advantage of this basement shrine. On January 8, 1937, the Sorrowful Mother Novena began an era that would establish Chicago’s Our Lady of Sorrows as a Marian Shrine of national and international fame. Through the 1940’s and into the 1950’s the Great Novena filled the church weekly in up to 38 separate services. The Novena spread to over 2300 additional parishes at the peak of its popularity.
In 1956, Pope Pius XII granted to Our Lady of Sorrows National Shrine the title of Basilica, and this honor was celebrated all through the following year with special pilgrimages. The Novena is still celebrated weekly, and the Basilica is increasingly being recognized for the splendor of its architecture, and the history it has witnessed. Tragically, the upper stages of the Western tower were lost to fire in 1984. But the interior and the exterior brickwork have benefited from periodic and ongoing restoration in recent years, resulting in a shrine that is breathtaking to many who enter for the first time. Like Lourdes, or Czestochowa, or Fatima, or the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe……Our Lady of Sorrows remains a foyer of Heaven, where the Blessed Virgin seems close enough to surprise us with the rustle of her veil.