Our Mother of Sheshan
Title of Mary the mother of Jesus venerated in China
Our Mother of Sheshan or Our Lady of Sheshan (佘山聖母), also known as Our Mother (or Lady) of Zo-sè (Zo-sè being the original from the Shanghainese pronunciation of Sheshan), is a celebrated Marian title of the Blessed Virgin Mary venerated by Chinese Roman Catholics. Among its religious devotees, the statue is sometimes known as Our Lady of Luck or Our Lady of Good Luck due to the Chinese symbology of "Fu" (福) associated with the styling posture of the entire image. The original image is currently enshrined in the National Shrine and Minor Basilica of Our Lady of Sheshan, in Shanghai, China.
Background
The city of Shanghai, located on the east coast of China, was an important access point to the Yangzi River Valley. As a treaty port it was also home to an international community. Shanghai served as the missionaries’ port of entry to China, a depot to gather supplies needed for the interior missions, a place of relaxation and safety from political strife, and a place to connect with a Chinese Catholic culture that went back to the 1600s.
History
The shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Sheshan is located in Songjiang District, western Shanghai, and is dedicated to Our Lady Help of Christians of Sheshan. In 1863, the then Superior of the Jesuit community in Shanghai purchased property on the south side of the mountain of Sheshan, and built a retreat house for retired Jesuit Fathers, with a small chapel next door. On March 1, 1868, the Bishop of Shanghai, Bishop Adrien Languillat, SJ, consecrated the chapel and blessed the image of Our Lady Help of Christians, which was copied from Our Lady of Victory in Paris.
During the attack of the Taiping Rebellion, the Superior of the Jesuit community in Shanghai, Fr.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Our Mother of Sheshan” is title of Mary the mother of Jesus venerated in China. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Mother, Sheshan and Title, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7111095. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1863 and 1868.
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This entry incorporates text from “Our Mother of Sheshan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.