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The Times of India
The Times of India
World
TOI World Desk

An Iowa priest vowed to build a shrine if he survived pneumonia; after recovering, he spent 42 years using over 100 train carloads of stone to create it

Iowa Pneumonia United States Grotto the National Register of Historic Places

In the late 19th century, a young seminarian battling a life-threatening bout of pneumonia made a promise that would eventually transform a small Iowa town into the home of one of the world's largest man-made grottos. If he survived, Father Paul Matthias Dobberstein vowed to build a shrine in honour of the Virgin Mary. He recovered and more than a century later, the promise he made has become a vast monument of stone, minerals, fossils and religious art in West Bend, Iowa.

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