 It is a major site of Catholic pilgrimage in Lithuania.Šiluva was first mentioned in 1457 in relation to the building of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Bartholomew by the Lithuanian noble Petras Gedgaudas.Later the "Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary" attracted huge numbers of the faithful to Šiluva, some from as far away of what later became Protestant Prussia.