American Pope, American Lady: The story behind Our Lady of the Prairie

Our Lady of the Prairie by Damien Walker

A Bishop on the Prairie

In 2022, Bishop Chad Zielinski arrived in the Diocese of New Ulm, Minnesota, and did what bishops once did as a matter of course: he drove to the four corners of his territory to see the land and the people entrusted to him. He found 9,000 square miles of Midwestern prairie: wheat fields stretching to the horizon, silos and barns and small town parishes scattered along the Minnesota River. He saw in that flatness not emptiness but loveliness, the kind that invites a name. He wanted to reconsecrate the diocese to the Blessed Virgin Mary under a title that belonged to this place. He called her Our Lady of the Prairie.

The bishop’s search for an artist led him to Rangiora, New Zealand, and to The Studio of Saint Philomena. Damien Walker had recently completed Ko Hāta Maria, the national Marian image for New Zealand, which wove Māori and Pākehā traditions into a single icon without flattening either. Bishop Zielinski saw in that work the capacity to hold together Western European piety and Indigenous American memory, two histories that mark the prairie in blood and blessing alike.

Walking the Land

In the summer of 2024, Walker travelled to Minnesota. He spent a week walking the land: the headwaters of the Minnesota River at Ortonville, the battlefields of the U.S.–Dakota War, the small wooden churches built by German immigrants in the nineteenth century, and the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in New Ulm where the finished painting would eventually preside. He visited sites of violence and sites of prayer, trying to understand what it meant for grace to fall on this particular soil.

The painting began on the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, a date chosen deliberately. The rosary has long been called a weapon of peace, and peace, not erasure, was the goal. Walker worked in the manner of the Renaissance masters, building the image in thin layers of oil glaze, praying and fasting as the iconographic tradition prescribes. The finished work stands six feet high and weighs 170 pounds. On 13 May 2025, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, the painting left the studio in Rangiora and began its journey more than 13,000 kilometres to New Ulm.

An Icon for a Wounded Place

At the centre of the composition, Mary stands radiant in white, clothed in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception made visible. She does not shrink from the darkness behind her. She stands in front of it: victorious, luminous, a beacon against sin and death and despair. Her feet rest on the moon, recalling the woman of Revelation 12, above time yet present within it. Her gaze meets the viewer’s as one approaches, but as one moves directly before her, her eyes shift. She hands you over. She leads you to Christ.

The Christ Child sits enthroned on Mary’s left arm, not fragile but regal, Sedes Sapientiae, the Seat of Wisdom. His right hand rises in blessing. His left holds the Gospel, oversized and bound in royal purple, adorned with Dakota beadwork. The beadwork is not ornament. It is a theological claim. The Gospel does not erase culture; it fulfils it.

The Dakota people of Minnesota developed their beadwork tradition over centuries, drawing designs from the plants and rivers and stars of the land. After the violence of 1862, when most Dakota were expelled from the state, that tradition nearly vanished. By the 1870s, Dakota artists had begun again, adapting their patterns to new circumstances. Walker placed their work on the cover of the Gospel to honour that resilience and to declare that Christ comes not to abolish but to complete what is good in every culture.

Around Mary’s waist is a sash patterned after Our Lady of Guadalupe. On the original tilma at Tepeyac, the black ribbon signified that Mary carried the Christ Child in her womb. Here the sash remains, but the meaning has shifted from waiting to fulfilment. Christ is no longer hidden within her. He is revealed, enthroned, held in her arms. The sash declares that this is the same Mother who appeared to Juan Diego in 1531, the one who came for the peoples of the Americas. She is not only the Mother of Christ. She is the Mother of the continent.

In her right arm, Mary holds a sheaf of twelve wheat stalks: symbol of the Apostles, symbol of the prairies, symbol of the Eucharist. Wheat is the lifeblood of this land, grown in the fields that surround every parish in the diocese. Here grace and soil meet. Mary is shown as Queen of the Apostles and the first tabernacle. She carries both Christ and the beginnings of His Church.

The rosary wrapped around her arm is her spiritual weapon, the quiet but powerful tool of grace. Its presence recalls that the painting was begun on the feast once named Our Lady of Victory.

The River of Grace

Mary’s robe flows downward like a river, beginning with Christ and spilling out through her. It recalls Ezekiel’s vision of water flowing from the temple and the blood and water that poured from Christ’s pierced side. Her garment falls upon churches, tipis, rivers, fields, barns, cathedrals, and homes. Grace does not stay distant. It touches everything.

At the base of the painting, Saint Peter’s Basilica appears beneath the shadow of the Cross, a sign of Peter’s martyrdom and the roots of the Church. On the opposite side stands the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Minneapolis, marking the missionary spread of the Gospel westward. Between them flows the Mississippi River, beginning from beneath the Cross like the water from Christ’s side, moving through the heartland and into the world. Along its banks appear tipis, canoes, and three fish reflecting the coat of arms of the Diocese of New Ulm. The river that once fed the Indigenous peoples now symbolises the flowing river of Trinitarian grace, pouring into the prairie.

A house and barn represent the domestic Church and the sanctification of daily labour. Beside them, the Church of Saint Joseph, the first Catholic parish in the region, symbolises humility, quiet faith, and deep roots. All of these lead upward to the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, the visible centre of the diocese today.

Above Rome, the sun rises. Over New Ulm, the sun sets. From east to west, the name of the Lord is praised.

The Pilgrimage of Hope

On 31 May 2025, the painting was unveiled at a Mass in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. Bishop Zielinski stood beside it. On 22 June, the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, he rededicated the diocese to Our Lady of the Prairie, and seven young adults began an eight day Pilgrimage of Hope. They carried a replica of the painting ninety miles across the diocese, stopping at twenty parishes along the way: Sleepy Eye, Wabasso, Willmar, Litchfield, Winsted, Hutchinson, Glencoe, Winthrop, St. Peter, North Mankato. They walked in 95 degree heat. They treated blisters and kept moving. On 24 June, Bishop Zielinski blessed the headwaters of the Minnesota River at Ortonville at six in the morning. Walker walked alongside the pilgrims for six miles through the rain.

On 25 June, Walker spoke at the Church of Saint Mary in Willmar. He told the gathered faithful:

“She revealed herself through the paintbrush. She is your image. She is for you. She is your Mother. She is not just here as a painting; it is she who revealed herself through the paintbrush. She sees you and knows you, and she wants to lead you to Christ.”

The pilgrimage concluded on 29 June, the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, with a welcome home celebration at the Church of Saint Mary in New Ulm. Archbishop Emeritus Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit spoke. The seven pilgrims gave testimony. The painting now resides permanently at the Diocesan Pastoral Center.

This is an image for the whole of America, calling everyone to Mary, and through her, to Christ.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/american-pope-american-lady-the-story Read the full story at The Pillar.