In 1887, Bishop Mathurin Picarda visited the mission of the Holy Ghost Fathers in Guéréo, Senegal, for the baptism of its first Catholic converts. The priests took a walk along the coast to the village of Popenguine. "What a magnificent site for a sanctuary to the Virgin!" the bishop observed. A native of Brittany, he decided to designate a famous Black Virgin in the neighboring province of Normandy, Notre Dame de la Délivrande, as patron saint of the new shrine, altering her title from the cryptic Celtic Notre-Dame de la Delivrande to the French Délivrance. A Norman benefactor provided a replica statue, which Msgr. Picard blessed on May 22, 1888, the Tuesday after Pentecost, during the first pilgrimage to the shrine at Popenguine. The shrine at Popenguine suffered many closures and setbacks during the next century, involving building collapse, epidemics of yellow fever and sleeping sickness, the Great War, and a shipwreck that took the lives of the bishop and 16 missionaries. The area remained primarily Muslim, but the Catholic faith and devotion to Our Lady of Deliverance persisted. A new church was built, dedicated in 1988 to the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin Mary and proclaimed a minor basilica in 1991 at the request of Cardinal Hyacinthe Thiamdoum, a native of Popenguine. Pope John Paul II visited the shrine and crowned the statue of Our Lady of Deliverance on February 20, 1992. Tens of thousands of pilgrims, many of them young people marching together, and many inspired by rumors of Marian apparitions there, go to Popenguine for an annual three-day celebration ending on Pentecost Monday, featuring solemn mass and a procession from the church to the Black Virgin's grotto shrine in the sea cliff.  

(Photo and information from the shrine's website, Sanctuaire de Poponguine, www.sanctuaire-poponguine.sn/hi-1887.php.)