Our Lady of America
| Our Lady of America | |
|---|---|
| Location | Rome City, Indiana |
| Date | 1956 |
| Witness | Sister Mary Ephrem |
| Type | Marian apparition |
| Holy See approval | Approved by Archdiocese of Cincinnati |
| Patronage | United States (unofficial), Rome City, Indiana |
Our Lady of America is the Blessed Virgin Mary as she identified herself in response to the US Bishops declaring Her Patroness of the United States as The Immaculate Conception, and is not to be confused with and in no way displaces Our Lady of Guadalupe who is known as Empress of the Americas. It is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary based on private revelations reported by Sister Mary Mildred Neuzil (then using the name Sister Mary Ephrem) of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood. Devotion to Our Lady of America was approved and promoted by Paul Francis Leibold, Archbishop of Cincinnati for the specific group of people who sought private healing through this Marian title. However, the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has not officially recognized or approved the alleged apparitions according to the personal diary of Sister Mary Ephrem. The United States and Latin America have churches dedicated to Mary with the title 'María, Reina de las América'.
The devotion to Our Lady of America has its source in a personal diary by Sister Mary Ephrem in which she describes apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary she claims to have experienced some time prior to 1956. Sister Mary Ephrem (baptized Mildred) Neuzil, was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1916 and in 1933 was professed in the Congregation of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus, of Dayton, Ohio.
The ministry of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood includes prayer, education, art, music, care of the elderly, social services, healthcare, parish and pastoral ministry. Around 1957 Sister Ephrem became part of a cloistered contemplative branch of the same congregation established in New Riegel, Ohio. The New Riegel cloister received papal approval in 1965. In 1977 the three surviving members, including Sister Mary Ephrem separated from the Sisters of the Precious Blood and formed an autonomous congregation, the Contemplative Sisters of the Indwelling Trinity in Fostoria, Ohio, directed by Sister Mary Ephrem. She also established an organization called "The Our Lady of America Center".
The Holy See rejected their petition for separation the following year, on the ground that three was “too small a number for a well-formed community”. The Sisters of the Indwelling Trinity survive to the present day even though they never received approval or have been recognized by the local ordinary of Toledo, Ohio.
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