Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes

Overview

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is a Catholic pilgrimage site in the town of Lourdes in southwestern France, near the Pyrenees mountains. It developed around the Grotto of Massabielle, a cave where Catholic tradition holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared to a local girl, Bernadette Soubirous, in 1858. Several million pilgrims visit each year, many of them sick or disabled, to seek healing, to pray and to take water from the spring at the grotto.

Present

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is administered by the Catholic Diocese of Tarbes and Lourdes. Masses are celebrated daily in several languages, and during the pilgrimage season two processions take place each day: a Eucharistic procession in the afternoon and a torchlight Marian procession in the evening. Pilgrims pray at the Grotto of Massabielle, touch its rock, light candles, and take water from the spring; in the sanctuary's baths, pilgrims are bathed in the spring water. The care of sick and disabled pilgrims defines the sanctuary's life, and volunteer helpers known as hospitaliers accompany them throughout their stay. A medical office founded in 1883, the Lourdes Medical Bureau, examines reported cures; of the thousands reported since 1858, the Catholic Church has recognized more than seventy as miraculous.

Religious Significance

Catholic tradition holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, appeared eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous, a fourteen-year-old girl from a poor local family, at the Grotto of Massabielle between February and July 1858. During one apparition, Bernadette dug in the ground at the back of the grotto and uncovered a spring, whose water pilgrims have sought for healing ever since. According to Bernadette's account, the figure identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, the Catholic teaching that Mary was conceived free from sin. The Catholic Church declared the apparitions worthy of belief in 1862. Bernadette became a nun and was declared a saint in 1933.

Lourdes became a major destination of Marian pilgrimage. Pilgrims come to pray for healing of body and spirit, and the presence of the sick at the heart of the pilgrimage is central to the sanctuary's identity. The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is celebrated on 11 February, the date of the first apparition. The Catholic Church also marks this date as the World Day of the Sick, in connection with Lourdes' role as a place of pilgrimage for the sick.

History & Structure

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes developed on the bank of the Gave de Pau river after the reported apparitions of 1858. The first church above the grotto, the Crypt, was completed in 1866, followed by the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, a slender church whose spire rises above the grotto, consecrated in 1876. The Rosary Basilica, a lower, domed church built in front of it, was consecrated in 1901. The underground Basilica of St. Pius X, a vast concrete hall holding around 25,000 people, was consecrated in 1958, one hundred years after the apparitions. The sanctuary covers about 50 hectares and includes the grotto itself, where a marble statue of Mary from 1864 marks the niche in which Bernadette reported seeing the figure, along with the baths, water fountains, and accommodation for sick pilgrims.

Additional Resources

• Official website: Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes
• Book: Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age by Ruth Harris (1999)