Black Madonna Shrine and Grottos

In 1927, John J. Glennon, Archbishop of St. Louis requested a group of Franciscans to come from Poland to set up a nursing home in the countryside.

A number of Franciscan Missionary Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus emigrated from Poland to the St. Louis area.

[4] After completing the chapel, Brother Bronislaus began building grottoes, using concrete and native Missouri tiff rock acquired from the nearby mining town of Potosi.

Cake pans shaped like lambs and rabbits became molds for the concrete animals that sit at the feet of St. Francis.

[5] Brother Bronislaus spent twenty three years building the shrine, and died from heat stroke in 1960 at the age of sixty-six, while working on a grotto of Our Lady of Fatima.