STOCKBRIDGE — Raised Protestant, as an adult Rebecca DeLiso gradually formed a private relationship with God that never really involved a church.

By 2023, she’d found some celebrity ministers she followed on YouTube.

“Everything was lukewarm,” she recalled.

Then in October of that year, she accepted a friend’s invitation to attend a Mass at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy.

“And I knew,” she said. “I found a church I can participate in.”

She began attending Mass on Saturdays in Stockbridge and attended instructional catechism for several months. She was confirmed as a Catholic during Easter Vigil a year ago.

So, how has it been for DeLiso to be Catholic?

She had no words as tears streamed from her eyes.

On Sunday, she donned an orange cap and was using a golf cart to deliver food to some of the other 600 volunteers at the shrine during Divine Mercy Weekend.

On Saturday, about 6,500 people came and on Sunday, some 12,500 pilgrims visited the sprawling campus on the top of Eden Hill, which was a mansion in the Gilded Age and then became a farm. The Marian Fathers purchased the 350-acre estate in 1941.

Berkshire County sheriff's deputies, Massachusetts State Police and Stockbridge police were on campus to help with crowd control.

The pilgrims came by bus, by car and by shuttle. The parking lot was set to hold 90 buses.

Votive candles in the Adoration Tent on the grounds of the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge on Sunday.

People came to walk the stations of the cross, pray silently, buy religious gifts or caps that said, “Got mercy?” and have their photos taken with cardboard cutouts of key figures in the Congregation of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception.

They also came for confession, and stood in line for hours to do so.

Pilgrims knell at one of the stations of the cross on the grounds of the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge on Sunday.

Kathy Dziok and her husband, Raymond Dziok, traveled from Chicopee. They expected to wait in line for more than two hours to make their confessions.

“Waiting in line is always a challenge,” she said. “But I think you always kind of meet people as you’re standing in line and talking to them. And it’s nice to hear their stories.”

She said they often run into people they know, from their own diocese or from Boston or New York.

Raymond Dziok put it simply.

“It’s just a sense of being forgiven when you leave here,” he said. “That’s all in the past. Christ accepts you like you are.”

Thousands of pilgrims attend the Divine Mercy Sunday solemn liturgy at the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge on Sunday afternoon.

At Sunday’s main Mass, the Most Rev. David Ricken, the bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisc., preached on a theme of misery to mercy and mercy to mission.

He quoted from the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, who offered a message of divine mercy that inspires the Marians, the fraternal community at the National Shrine of Divine Mercy.

The sun shone and the breeze was nearly constant during the outdoor service on Sunday.

The Most Rev, David L. Ricken, Bishop of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wis., processes into the Divine Mercy Sunday solemn liturgy at the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge on Sunday afternoon.

Craig Bero of Housatonic was working at a cafe he created on the site.

“There’s a humility and a grace and obviously a religiosity to the pilgrims that are coming up here,” he said. “It’s always been sacred ground. We’re sitting right on top of a glacial lake. It’s an amazing environment to come up here. There’s a transition. The sun goes down, and it just gradually sets over the whole range, and the light becomes transfigured.”

Thousands of pilgrims attend the Divine Mercy Sunday solemn liturgy at the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge on Sunday afternoon.

Brian Wade of Portsmouth, N.H., first came to Divine Mercy Weekend 28 years ago, when his daughters were children.

“So coming in the very early ‘90s, late ‘80s, there was a much smaller, intimate group of people,” he said. “The shrine itself, where the Mass is, was smaller in the sense of the number of people coming. And the message hasn’t changed. It’s a hope for the world in this time where there’s so much evil, so much conflict, so much war.”

A woman sings during the Divine Mercy Sunday solemn liturgy at the Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge on Sunday afternoon.

Wade said people come for hope.

“And the fact that you can come to an open air shrine that has such spiritual gifts and hope is really incredible,” he said. “The only thing that comes close to this to me is being in Rome at a Palm Sunday Mass with (Pope) John Paul II because you saw the universality of the church.”

Working an information booth, he noted people at Divine Mercy Weekend came from Haiti, Canada and from all over the United States.

Working with Wade was Jack Callahan of Pittsfield.

“We're very blessed to have the Marians right here,” Callahan said of the 30 residents on site. “So I try to do my bit to help everything go smoothly.”

He said he’d used his French on Sunday to answer a visitor’s questions. He also knows Spanish, and that might have also come in handy.

“Just a beautiful place,” he said. “Not only that. but a holy place. So we’re blessed to have it here in Berkshire County.”