This year marks the 160th anniversary of when Bernadette Soubirous announced to fellow villagers in the French town of Lourdes that she was experiencing visions of the Mother of God. An understandably sceptical local community at first didn’t believe the girl who would go on to be known the world over as St Bernadette of…
Lourdes: 160 years of healing In our modern day, the word ‘Lourdes’ often evokes imagery of the Virgin Mary’s apparitions, but the historical, geographical and social context is usually excluded from the imagination. What exactly is the history of the place where a young Bernadette Soubirous experienced the Marian visions and how did the…
Lourdes: 160 years of healing Greg Daly looks at the first ever Irish national pilgrimage to Lourdes September 1913 may to most Irish people be a date forever linked with the Dublin lock-out and Yeats’s poem about Dublin Corporation’s failure to provide a home for the Hugh Lane paintings, but it was also the…
Lourdes: 160 years of healing Fr Robert McCabe reflects on his Lourdes pilgrimage experiences A visual harmony of architecture impresses pilgrim and tourist alike who make their way to the Grotto of Massabielle. The spires, mosaics and statues which surround the golden cross and crown provide a welcome relief and spiritual focus after the distraction…
Colm Fitzpatrick
Greg Daly