CHAMPION, Wis. — In France, the shrine at Lourdes is surrounded by hundreds of hotels and has received as many as 45,000 pilgrims in a single day. Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico, draws millions of fervent worshipers a year. 
 
 Now, a little chapel among the dairy farms here, called Our Lady of Good Help, has joined that august company in terms of religious status, if not global fame. This month, it became one of only about a dozen sites worldwide, and the first in the United States, where apparitions of the Virgin Mary have been officially validated by the Roman Catholic Church. 
 
 In 1859, the year after Mary is said to have appeared in Lourdes, a Belgian immigrant here named Adele Brise said she was visited three times by Mary, who hovered between two trees in a bright light, clothed in dazzling white with a yellow sash around her waist and a crown of stars above her flowing blond locks. As instructed, Ms. Brise devoted her life to teaching Catholic beliefs to children. 
 
 On Dec. 8, after a two-year investigation by theologians who found no evidence of fraud or heresy and a long history of shrine-related conversions, cures and other signs of divine intervention, Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay declared “with moral certainty” that Ms. Brise did indeed have encounters “of a supernatural character” that are “worthy of belief.” 
 
 Lourdes-like hordes have not yet gathered, but since the weighty decree a growing stream of visitors, some driving several hours, has found its way here to pray and revel in what many say is the palpable presence of Mary. Calls are coming in from as far as New York from church groups that want to visit by the busload, and local church officials are wondering whether they thought too small when they built a new parking lot — planned well before this month — with 75 spaces. 
 
 Debbie Banda, 46, and her mother, Mary Young, 75, who live nearby, learned of the shrine and the bishop’s decision from the news, and came for the first time on Wednesday. 
 
 “It’s incredible — she’s here, you just feel it,” Ms. Banda said after praying in the crypt chapel, said to be on the spot of the apparitions. As they passed a statue of Mary in white, just as described by Ms. Brise, Ms. Banda was overcome with emotion, weeping and hugging her mother. The two of them went back to pray some more. 
 
 “We need the Virgin Mary’s protection, and for her to keep an eye on our soldiers, too,” said Ms. Young, whose sons have served in the Middle East. “We’ll definitely be coming back.” 
 
 Catholic leaders described the decree in Wisconsin as a bolt of joy at a trying time for the Catholic church, which is troubled by revelations of sex abuse. 
 
 “This is a gift to the believers,” said the Rev. Johann Roten, director of the International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton. 
 
 “It would be devious to say that this was somehow pulled out of the attic to exorcise the problems of the church today,” Father Roten said in a telephone interview. “But hopefully this will have a beneficial impact on the people, showing them that there are ways of living with faith that are very pure.” 
 
 The Diocese of Green Bay is under fire from lawyers in an abuse-related lawsuit, who charge that it has obstructed justice by destroying potentially incriminating files on former priests. The diocese says it has cooperated fully with law enforcement and discarded psychiatric records of deceased priests as required by federal privacy laws. 
 
 Bishop Ricken, in an interview at his office in Green Bay, noted that the church has a tradition of taking its time with such cases. Over the years, he said, his predecessors had implicitly endorsed the shrine by holding services there and encouraging people to visit. 
 
 When he moved to Green Bay in 2008, he said, “I was struck by how many stories I heard of answered prayers” — resolved family and employment problems as well as medical cures — and he decided to start a formal investigation. 
 
 “People have a hunger for the spiritual, and right here in our backyard was a source to meet that need,” Bishop Ricken said. The church’s scandals did not influence his decision, he said, but if the shrine can become a source of hope and healing for people, including victims of errant priests, “that would be beautiful.” 
 
 The Vatican gives primary responsibility for evaluating apparitions to local bishops. Wary of fraud, the church is generally reluctant even to investigate claims. 
 
 Over the 20th century, some 386 major apparitions of Mary were reported at a level beyond local rumors, said Father Roten, who has been an investigator in purported sightings. About 75 of those were studied, and at most a dozen were recognized as valid, he said. Increasingly, he said, the church makes use of psychiatric examinations and brain scans to see if people making claims are mentally healthy and not having hallucinations. 
 
 That kind of examination was not possible, of course, for Ms. Brise, and Bishop Ricken said that his panel of three theological specialists had considered a host of indirect factors in concluding that her sighting was credible, following guidelines set by the Vatican in 1978. 
 
 By all reports, he said, Ms. Brise was humble and honest and faithfully carried out Mary’s mandate to serve the church throughout her life. In one striking sign of a divine presence, he said, the shrine’s grounds and the terrified crowd who gathered there were spared the flames of the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871, which devoured the surrounding lands and homes and caused more than 1,200 deaths. Her account of Mary’s apparition and message was consistent with accepted cases. 
 
 The dozens of families and individuals who stopped to pray at the shrine on Wednesday afternoon seemed to have no doubts at all about the apparitions. 
 
 “There’s a lot of power here,” said Theresa Vandermause, 45, who for years has made a weekly pilgrimage to the shrine with her friend Judy Deprey, 65. “You can feel the presence of Mary, and it feels like she’s listening to you.” 
 
 The two women were pleased that the church had finally declared Mary’s visits here to be real, but said that the decree had not really changed anything. 
 
 “We knew that already!” they declared. ||||| Versions of the secret, broadcast on hundreds of Web sites (usually under headlines like, ''Third Secret Revealed!'') range from worldwide nuclear annihilation to deep rifts in the Roman Catholic Church that lead to rival papacies. 
 
 Fatima fanatics have held hunger strikes -- one even hijacked a plane -- to try to force the Vatican to disclose the secret. During John Paul's first visit to the shrine in 1982, on the first anniversary of the assassination attempt, a knife-wielding Spanish priest tried to kill the pope, but was wrestled to the ground by security officers. 
 
 John Paul has always credited the Virgin of Fatima with saving his life. After he visited the shrine in 1982 to give thanks for his survival, a bullet extracted from his body was placed alongside diamonds in a gold crown worn by a statue of the Virgin. 
 
 In 1991, on the 10th anniversary of the attack, he returned again to give thanks for his life as well as for the collapse of Communism, which believers say the Virgin of Fatima also predicted in 1917. 
 
 ''On the solemn occasion of his visit to Fatima, his holiness has directed me to make an announcement to you,'' Cardinal Sodano said, adding that the pope ''wishes his pilgrimage to be a renewed gesture of gratitude to Our Lady for her protection during these years of his papacy. 
 
 ''This protection seems also to be linked to the so-called third part of the secret of Fatima.'' 
 
 The cardinal said the secret in its entirety would soon be published by the Vatican ''after the preparation of an appropriate commentary.'' 
 
 The pope did refer to the prophecies today, speaking of ''Fatima, where these times of tribulation were foretold,'' but he made no mention of the ''third secret.'' Instead, he once again gave thanks ''for the goodness of God toward me, when severely struck on that May 13, 1981, I was rescued from death.'' 
 
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 The pope first learned of the secret a few days after he was elected in 1978, the Vatican said. He did not announce it himself today, said his spokesman, Dr. Joaquin Navarro-Valls, because he was ''personally involved.'' Vatican officials did not say why the secret was not revealed sooner after the assassination attempt in 1981. 
 
 In a new tribute at a prayer service at the shrine on Friday night, the pope donated to the shrine the ring given to him by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the late primate of Poland. Cardinal Wyszynski, whose long fight against Communism in Poland inspired the present pope and millions of their countrymen, told John Paul after his election in 1978 that he would lead the church into the new millennium. 
 
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 Dr. Navarro-Valls dismissed speculation that the gift was a signal that the pope was set to resign as ''150 percent wrong.'' He described the ring as ''one of the pope's most precious possessions,'' given as an offer of thanks. 
 
 The fact that the pope put the two dead witnesses to the Virgin's apparitions on the path of sainthood today was another sign of his devotion to Fatima. The two, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, are the first children ever beatified by the Roman Catholic Church who were not martyrs. Beatification, which is bestowed only on the dead, is the penultimate step before sainthood. 
 
 Before the ceremony, the pope, who turns 80 on Thursday, met privately inside the basilica near the children's tombs with the third surviving witness to the apparition, Lucia de Jesus dos Santos, 93, a Carmelite nun, who believers say was the main recipient of prophecies from the Virgin about 20th century debacles. The Vatican said that it had consulted with Sister Lucia before making its announcement today. 
 
 The Virgin of Fatima was said to have appeared before three shepherd children on May 13, 1917, and on five later occasions. Lucia was 10. Her cousins, Francisco and Jacinta, who were 8 and 7, died in the influenza pandemic a few years later. Believers say two of the Fatima secrets were revealed in writing by Lucia in the 1940's. The third secret was put in a sealed envelope and sent to Rome more than 40 years ago. 
 
 Interpretations of the secrets vary, but generally believers think that the first foretold the end of World War I and the start of World War II, and that the other predicted the spread, then the collapse of Communism and the conversion of Russia. 
 
 The latter prophecy, which came with a request that the church consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, made Fatima an ideological shrine for anti-Communists during the cold war. John Paul II finally consecrated the whole world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1984. 
 
 Fatima, like the rest of Portugal, also had fascist links during World War II, when Portugal was neutral under the right-wing dictatorship of Antonio Salazar but traded with the Nazi regime. This month, the rector of the sancutary, Luciano Guerra, confirmed news reports that in 1976 Fatima received Nazi gold bars bearing the Third Reich insignia looted from Jews during the war, and sold them in 1982 and 1986 to finance construction at the sanctuary. 
 
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 Today, many pilgrims, some wearing baseball hats emblazoned with the names of Jacinta and Francisco, cheered after Cardinal Sodano delivered his message. 
 
 ''It's wonderful that the pope knew the prophecy and survived it,'' said Lucia Dias, 31, a lawyer from Sintra, who added that she had once believed that the third secret was a prophecy of World War III. She made her own prediction about the pope: ''I think now he will die soon.'' 
 
 Until today, besides John Paul and Sister Lucia, the only other living person believed to be privy to the secret was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In 1996, he told Portugal's main Catholic radio station that there was nothing worrisome in the message, and that it remained secret because the Vatican wanted to avoid ''confusing religious prophecy with sensationalism.'' 
 
 Whether today's announcement will appease some of the more fanatical devotees of the ''third secret'' mystery is unclear. Some of those believers, who choose to view the reforms of the Second Vatican Council as heresies predicted by the Virgin of Fatima, may dismiss the Vatican's announcement as a cover-up. 
 
 Even some who attended Mass today seemed let down. ''What they said all happened in the past,'' Julio Estela, 33, a car salesman from northern Portugal, said after the cardinal spoke. ''This isn't a prediction. It's disappointing. I think there's more.''
– About a dozen sites worldwide can boast that they have been validated by the Catholic Church as being sites where the Virgin Mary has appeared—and for the first time, that list includes a US location. A tiny chapel 17 miles northeast of Green Bay, Wisc., called Our Lady of Good Hope joins the likes of Mexico's Our Lady of Guadalupe and France's shrine at Lourdes, both of which draw millions each year. In 1859, a Belgian immigrant named Adele Brise said Mary—a dazzling white figure with cascading blond hair and a crown of stars, hovering between a pair of trees—appeared to her three times and instructed her to spend her life teaching Catholic beliefs to children. A two-year investigation that concluded on Dec. 8 found no evidence of fraud or heresy, but did find a long history of shrine-related conversions, cures, and other indications of divine intervention, leading Bishop David L. Ricken of Green Bay to declare “with moral certainty” that Brise had encounters “of a supernatural character” that are “worthy of belief.” The Vatican, wary of fraud, gives local bishops the primary responsibility of evaluating apparitions, in part by using guidelines set by the Vatican in 1978. The New York Times notes one "striking sign of a divine presence:" During 1871's Great Peshtigo fire, which killed 1,200 and destroyed the surrounding lands, the shrine's grounds and the people gathered there were spared.