This “Lourdes of Switzerland” was a gift of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln. In 1581, she appeared to a handicapped, destitute peasant in a dream and told him where to dig for a sacred well to be healed. The price: his six daughters all went home to their heavenly mother in one week. That put the fear of the Black Madonna into the villagers and they installed White Madonnas instead. Only in the 1950’s with a modern church being built, did they commission a copy of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln.

While one may say that this is just another one of hundreds of copies of the Black Madonna of Loreto in Europe, several things make it special…