Over the centuries, one of Lithuania's most important Marian shrines and a thriving pilgrimage centre became the church in the small village of Šiluva in the Kaunas region. It used to be called the Samogitian Częstochowa, but today it is called the Samogitian Lourdes.

The fame of Šiluva , a sleepy little town in Samogitia, began in the early 17th century, when the Virgin Mary appeared in the fields and meadows around it . This was at a time when there was no Roman Catholic church here , as the owner of the village, Melchior Zawisza, had converted to Calvinism. The old church from 1457 was turned into a church.

Historical sources are not very precise about the course of events in 1607, 1608 or in 1612. Details also vary, although each story about the apparitions features a group of shepherds who saw a weeping woman with a child in her arms on a stone near Šiluva. As the woman was crying and the shepherds did not want to leave her without help, they informed the Calvinist catechist Nicholas Fieras and the teacher Salomon Grodzki about the child. They questioned the woman, who told them that she was crying because her son had once been worshipped here, and today crops are growing here. After these words, the woman disappeared, and the oldest resident of Šiluva mentioned the church that used to exist on this spot, which was liquidated during the Protestant era, and the buried objects of worship. So the inhabitants of Šiluva notified the bishop's curia, which sent Father Jan Kozakiewicz (died 1647), later parish priest of Šiluva and suffragan bishop of Samogitia. Under his direction, the area indicated by the old man was searched. A chest with church vessels and vestments, as well as the foundation documents of the old Šiluva temple, were unearthed from the ground. Above all, an image of the Virgin Mary and Child Jesus was found in the buried chest, in which a weeping woman was recognised. The image soon turned out to be miraculous .

So much for the legend. The fact is that from the 1730s-40s, believers began making pilgrimages to Šiluva. It was the beginning of the Counter-Reformation in the area of the Samogitian diocese, which had emerged very weakened after the religious unrest of the 16th century. The inaccessible - forested - terrain, with a poorly developed network of roads and towns and thus a parish network, combined with the Reformation, resulted in Samogitia being left with only seven parishes and no monastery at the beginning of the 17th century. Times changed when the diocese was headed in 1633 by Jurgis Tiškevičius (1599-1656), who was involved in the renewal of the Church. It is to him that the development of Marian devotion at Šiluva should be linked.

The first wooden shrine at the site of the apparitions was consecrated by Samogitian suffragan Piotr Parczewski (c.1598-1658/59) in 1651. According to legend, in this first temple the stone served as an altar. Today, the area left by the first temple is occupied by a chapel in the cemetery designed by Antoni Wiwulski (1877-1919) in 1912.

The growing popularity of the place , especially after the Muscovite occupation (1655-1660), and the consequent wealth of the Szydłowiec parish, made it possible to undertake a number of investments in the 18th century . Of these, the most important was the erection of a brick church . Construction was started in 1760 by parish priest Jan Dominik Lopacinski (1708-1778), later bishop of Samogitia, and completed in 1786 by another priest, Tadeusz Bukaty (1740-1795), who became Lopacinski's suffragan. After the construction was completed, the coronation ceremony of the Marian image took place , attended by twelve bishops, the administrator of Samogitia, Antoni Giełgud (died 1795), five voivodes, numerous senators and reportedly 30,000 pilgrims from Lithuania, Prussia and Poland. The coronation ceremony with crowns blessed in Rome by Pius VI was performed in the town square by Bishop Jan Stefan Giedroyć (1730-1803). Afterwards, the painting was ceremoniously moved to the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Afterwards, the painting was solemnly moved to the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, where it was placed in the main altar.

The Šiluva image of Our Lady of Šiluva is one of only three miraculous images of the Blessed Virgin Mary to be crowned in Lithuania , along with those at Trakai and the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius. The Šiluva image is a copy of the "Salus Populi Romani" (Saving of the Roman People) Marian painting from the Roman Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore . This was a very popular image during the Counter-Reformation period, and copies of the 'Salus Populi Romani' image were sent from Rome to the remotest corners of the Christian world. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the cult of the Virgin Mary of the Snow was strongest in the first half of the 17th century, connecting both with the Counter-Reformation and with the Turkish threat, which, according to the idea of the 'antemurale christianitatis' (Christian bulwark), was concretised during the victorious defence of Chocim in 1621. Its promotion was also linked to a debate with Protestants, who questioned the cult of Mary and the worship of miraculous images. The image from Šiluva was probably created in Lithuanian workshops in the first half of the 17th century. It is decorated with a metal cloth made by Wawrzyniec Hoffman of Königsberg in 1674 .

The church at Šiluva is a three-nave hall with an elongated, lower and narrower presbytery ending in a pentagonal shape, which is enclosed by a sacristy and a treasury. The façade is flanked by quadrilateral towers between which rises a high pediment. In addition to the main portal, small entrances are planned in the side wall to the north, i.e. on the town side. The façade is framed by pilasters supporting the beam and enlivened by panels. The lower part is rusticated. The church was built of red brick, plastering only some elements of the façade, including the two gables: the two-storey front gable and the one between the body of the church and the presbytery. White-plastered bands also enclose the window and door openings and the beam. This does not appear to have been the original plan, especially as the brickwork is laid carelessly. The task of plastering was postponed but, unfortunately, with the Partitions, there was a slow resentment towards the Roman Catholic Church by the Orthodox Tsar, so one can suspect that in the 19th century it was not possible to carry out additions. Although repairs were undertaken in 1892 and in 1925 (a modest fresco decoration of the interior was created then), it was not decided to plaster the building.

It is worth noting that the church was started by Jan Dominik Łopaciński . It was one of his many architectural initiatives. He started the erection of a church in Onikty, and the famous architect Johann Christoph Glaubitz (c. 1710-1767) carried out some work for him at Vorny Cathedral. In the estate of the bishops of Samogitia, Janopol Lopacinski built a palace.

Valuable and interesting is the late baroque-classical furnishings , decorated with stucco figures, which are linked to the person of Tomasz Podhajski . The architectural forms of the altars, the pulpit and the baptistery were already designed in the new - classicist - style. Figures realised in the older, Baroque style were added to them. The interior also has a colour scheme in keeping with classicism - white juxtaposed with gilded detailing. It can therefore be assumed that the designer was not the conservative Podhajski, but an architect working in the new convention. He may have been Augustyn Kossakowski (1737-1803), working in Vilnius, but also in Samogitian Calvary and other Lithuanian towns.

In the altars we can see figures of the apostles and fathers of the Western Church, as well as representations of the most important saints, among whom St Casimir, the patron saint of Lithuania, could not be missing. The pulpit's finial features a statue of Christ as the Good Shepherd, and the figures of the four Evangelists in a basket. In the presbytery, above the place where the bishop's throne and the priests' stalls once stood, obelisks were placed on a wide, undulating pedestal resembling the balustrade of a lodge. This compensated for the architectural lack of this element. Interestingly, the obelisk on the left contains symbols referring to the pope and the one on the right to the bishop, which is obviously a clear allusion to the papal coronation of the image and the bishop's protection of Šiluva.

The organ and choir were built in 1789. The instrument is attributed to Mikolaj Janson (d. 1791) of Vilnius. The music choir itself rises on six pillars of an elaborate, irregular shape. Although its form refers to the so-called Baroque style, the decorative motifs are already Classical (griffins with vases, buccarions).

It is also worth mentioning that the church contains a 19th-century epitaph plaque of Leon Kontrym (1847-1905), marshal of the local nobility. Another plaque containing an inscription in Polish dates from 1645 and is a call to prayer for the dead. It was originally placed in the wooden church and was moved to it after the erection of the new church.

After the communist era, Marian devotion at Šiluva was revived. In 1993, Pope John Paul II visited the shrine , which was commemorated with a plaque. The main celebrations take place at the shrine on 8 September, the church's patronal feast day, which is the Nativity of Mary (Our Lady of Sowing). Numerous pilgrims, not only from Lithuania, flock to the town on this day. In recent years, a Pilgrim Centre has been built to serve the pilgrim movement, and a field altar has been erected between the cemetery and the sanctuary.