Go to Joseph. Wherever he is.

Q: St. Joseph's Oratory · Montreal, Canada

saint-joseph.orgThe largest shrine dedicated to St. Joseph in the world. Founded in 1904 by St. André Bessette, a humble doorkeeper whose devotion to St. Joseph produced healings so numerous that an entire wall of the votive chapel is covered with crutches left behind by those who walked out healed. The basilica's dome is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and one of the three largest in the world. The heart of St. André Bessette is preserved in a reliquary within the shrine. Two million pilgrims visit each year. The 283 stone steps leading to the basilica include a center staircase of 99 wooden steps reserved for pilgrims who climb on their knees.

Joseph Prays
May 15
6 min read

Updated: May 17

Shrines, relics, and sacred sites dedicated to St. Joseph across the world. The places where heaven touched earth, and where his intercession is felt most powerfully.

TLDR

A pilgrimage is the act of traveling to a sacred place to encounter God more deeply, to pray, and to receive grace. St. Joseph is honored at shrines on every continent, from the largest basilica dome in the Western Hemisphere to a carpenter's workshop in Nazareth. Some of these sites hold relics of the Holy Family. Some were built by saints who devoted their lives to him. Some are places where he appeared, where miraculous springs flow, or where the sick have left their crutches on the wall and walked out healed. All of them are places where you can go to Joseph and know that he is near.

What is a pilgrimage?

A pilgrimage is a journey made with the heart as much as the feet.

Since the earliest days of the Church, Christians have traveled to sacred places to pray, to do penance, to ask for healing, and to encounter the presence of God in a way that their ordinary surroundings could not provide. The tradition goes back to the people of Israel who journeyed to the Temple in Jerusalem three times a year, and Jesus Himself made that pilgrimage as a boy, the same journey during which Joseph and Mary searched for Him for three days before finding Him in the Temple.

A pilgrimage is not a vacation. It is not sightseeing with a rosary. It is the decision to leave the familiar behind and walk toward a place where God has acted, where a saint has prayed, where a miracle has happened, and to place yourself in that stream of grace. The Church teaches that pilgrimage is a form of prayer in motion, a physical expression of the interior journey every soul is making toward God.

You do not have to travel across the world to make a pilgrimage. Some of the sites listed here are a short drive from where you live. What matters is the intention of the heart: I am going to meet my father. I am going to ask for his help. I am going to a place where he has been, and I am trusting that he is still there.

What are relics?

In the Catholic tradition, relics are the physical remains or personal belongings of saints, preserved and venerated by the faithful as tangible connections to the holy men and women who have gone before us.

The Church recognizes three classes of relics. First-class relics are parts of a saint's body, such as bone, hair, or blood. Second-class relics are objects the saint owned, wore, or used during their lifetime, such as clothing, tools, or prayer books. Third-class relics are objects that have been touched to a first-class relic, carrying a connection by contact.

The veneration of relics is not worship. The Church is very clear about this. We do not worship saints or their remains. We honor them because their bodies were temples of the Holy Spirit, because God worked through them in life and continues to work through them after death, and because their physical remains remind us that the communion of saints is real, that the bond between heaven and earth is not broken by death, and that the people who loved God most faithfully are still near us, still interceding, still helping.

When you visit a shrine that holds a relic of St. Joseph or a saint devoted to him, you are not visiting a museum. You are standing in the presence of someone who is alive in Christ, whose prayers carry weight before the throne of God, and whose physical remains are a bridge between this world and the next.

The relics you will encounter at the pilgrimage sites below include the heart of St. André Bessette, preserved at the Oratory in Montreal; the tradition of the Holy Cloak of St. Joseph, venerated in Rome; the marble stairs climbed by Jesus on the way to His trial, brought to Rome by St. Helena; and the very ground of the workshop in Nazareth where Joseph raised the Son of God.

These are not artifacts behind glass. They are invitations. Come closer. Touch what the saints touched. Stand where they stood. And let the grace that flowed through them flow into you.

Places to Visit

St. Joseph's Oratory · Montreal, Canada

saint-joseph.org

The largest shrine dedicated to St. Joseph in the world. Founded in 1904 by St. André Bessette, a humble doorkeeper whose devotion to St. Joseph produced healings so numerous that an entire wall of the votive chapel is covered with crutches left behind by those who walked out healed. The basilica's dome is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and one of the three largest in the world. The heart of St. André Bessette is preserved in a reliquary within the shrine. Two million pilgrims visit each year. The 283 stone steps leading to the basilica include a center staircase of 99 wooden steps reserved for pilgrims who climb on their knees.

The Church of St. Joseph · Cotignac, France

The site of St. Joseph's apparition. On June 7, 1660, a young shepherd named Gaspard Ricard was tending his flock on Mount Bessillon when St. Joseph appeared to him and told him to lift a specific rock. Beneath it, Gaspard found a hidden spring of fresh water that had never existed before. The water was healing. Louis XIV, having already consecrated France to Mary at a nearby shrine, consecrated himself and his throne to St. Joseph at Cotignac. The Bishop of Fréjus joined both shrines under the title "Sanctuary of the Holy Family." Pilgrims still drink from the spring today.

The Holy Cloak Chapel · Church of the Gesù, Rome, Italy

The Church of the Gesù, the mother church of the Society of Jesus, houses a chapel dedicated to St. Joseph and the veneration of his holy cloak. The tradition of the Holy Cloak, the garment of the man who wrapped the Christ Child and carried Him through the flight into Egypt, is one of the most powerful images in Josephite devotion. The cloak represents his protection, his fatherhood, and the warmth of a father who covers his children when the world is cold.

The Loretto Chapel · Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA

Home of the Miraculous Staircase, a spiral staircase built in the late 1800s by an unknown carpenter who arrived at the chapel when the Sisters of Loretto prayed a novena to St. Joseph for help. The staircase makes two complete 360-degree turns with no center support column and was built without nails, using only wooden pegs. The carpenter disappeared without payment when the work was done. The sisters and many faithful believe the carpenter was St. Joseph himself.

The Church of St. Joseph · Nazareth, Israel

Built over the traditional site of St. Joseph's carpentry workshop, where he raised Jesus and taught Him the trade of a craftsman. The lower level of the church preserves ancient caves and storage areas believed to have been part of the Holy Family's home. This is the place where Joseph lived his hidden life, where he worked beside the Son of God, where the most ordinary days in human history were also the holiest. Pilgrims come from around the world to stand in the workshop where a father taught a son to build.

The Sanctuary of St. Joseph · Kalisz, Poland

Home of a seventeenth-century icon of the Holy Family with St. Joseph at the center, venerated for over three hundred years as miraculous. Pilgrims have reported healings and conversions here since the 1670s. The shrine holds a unique place in twentieth-century history: in 1945, the Polish priests who survived the Dachau concentration camp credited their liberation to a vow they had made to consecrate themselves to St. Joseph if they were freed. After the war, hundreds of them came to Kalisz to fulfill the vow, and the sanctuary became the spiritual home of Polish clergy devotion to St. Joseph. Every year on the anniversary of the Dachau liberation, surviving priests and their successors return to Kalisz to give thanks. It is the shrine of a father who keeps his promises to the men who keep theirs.