Our Lady of Milk and the Good Party
The first Marian shrine in the United States · San Agustín, Florida · 1565-1609
The coming of devotion to the New World
On September 8, 1565, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés landed on the Florida coast with a fleet of Spanish settlers. The chaplain of the expedition, Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, held the first Mass documented in the territory of what the United States is today. With them they brought a very deep-rooted devotion in the 16th century Spain: Our Lady of Milk and the Good Party, the image of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding the Child Jesus, venerated in the shrine of Saint Augustine of Antioch in Bethlehem.
The first permanent sanctuary (1609)
In 1609, forty-four years after the foundation of Saint Augustine - the oldest city in the United States - the Spanish settlers raised a small chapel in the Mission Name of God to house the image of the Virgin. This simple prayer became the first permanent Marian sanctuary in North America. The devotion was especially intense among families who asked the Virgin for protection in childbirth and fertility for sterile marriages, a tradition that has continued continuously to this day. The sanctuary was destroyed in the English invasions of 1702 and 1728, rebuilt in 1875 and endowed with the current chapel in 1914.
Recognition and living pilgrimage
On January 24, 2019, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops raised the sanctuary to the category of National Sanctuary, confirming its historical primacy. On October 10, 2021, the canonical coronation of the image was held. Thousands of pilgrims come every year to pray to the small size of the Virgin, especially couples who wish to conceive a child or women waiting for a happy birth, thus continuing a devotion of more than four centuries on American soil.
that you fed your love for the Child God,
intercede for those who expect the gift of life
and accompany every mother at the time of birth. Amen.