The people behind the shrine
A small effort, offered in prayer.
VirtualShrine began with a simple conviction: that no one should be cut off from the great places of prayer by illness, age, or distance. Many who most long for Lourdes or Assisi are the very ones who can never travel there. This site is a way to walk those pilgrimages anyway — slowly, one day at a time, from a bedside or an armchair.
It is a small, independent work, built and maintained by hand rather than by a company or an institution. There is no advertising and nothing to buy; the candles are free and the pilgrimages are free. What holds it together is the same thing that fills the shrines themselves — the prayers of the people who come.
Francis X. Cunnane III
Founder
A secular Franciscan and a United States Marine Corps veteran, he built VirtualShrine as a work of prayer. With an undergraduate degree in theology and a master’s now underway at Catholic International University, he shaped these pilgrimages in the spirit of Saint Francis — to carry the great shrines to those whom illness, age, or distance keep from going in person, so that no one is left standing outside the door.
If you would like to help — with a translation, a correction to a prayer, or simply a word of encouragement — you are warmly welcome to reach out through the site’s contact details.