Lourdes Pilgrimage Facts: Know More About This Holy Site

Lourdes, the most attended pilgrimage site in the Christian world, is not an old place.

It is a fairly modern site near Paris in France. In 1858, Marian apparitions were said to have taken place at Lourdes.

Lourdes' pilgrimage season runs from April to October. Every year, four to six million pilgrims from all over the world visit the chapel. It is believed that more than 200 million pilgrims have come to visit Lourdes since 1860 to offer prayers.

The Saint Pius Shrine is the major attraction for the lady of Lourdes. Visitors can now rent an electronic MP3 player at the St. Joseph gate to hear the miracles explained in a variety of languages. You can hear a message from Pope Pius IX. There are messages about the Virgin Mary and Bernadette Soubirous.

From July through to September, the shrine hosts a Pilgrimage Service, which begins at 8:30 a.m. at the Crowned Statue. The program includes service at two local chapels, an introduction to Lourdes and its themes, the Way of the Cross, and Bernadette's Footsteps (a tour of the significant locations in her life).

Lourdes Pilgrimage Geographic Location

Lourdes is located 415 mi (668 km) south of Paris. Visit the Loire Valley Castles, Bordeaux wine area, and the charming and bustling Bordeaux city on your trip.

Lourdes is down in southern France, near the prime meridian, amid the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains. The Pyrenean peaks of Aneto, Montaigu, and Vignemale overlook it from the south.

Three summits near the town rise up to 3,280.84 ft (1,000 m). They are known as the Béout, the Petit Jer, and the Grand Jer. The Pic du Jer's funicular railway takes you to the Grand Jer.

Lourdes is located at an elevation of 1,380 ft (420 m). It is in a central location where the fast-flowing River Gave de Pau flows from its source at Gavarnie; into it flow other smaller rivers from Barèges and Cauterets.

Gave de Rau then forks west towards the Béarn, going through the grotto's walls and downstream to Pau and Biarritz.

According to interesting Lourdes facts, Massabielle is a rocky outcrop surrounded by a loop of the Gave de Pau. There is a naturally-occurring, irregularly-formed small cave or grotto on the northern face of this rock, along the river bed.

This is where the 1858 apparitions occurred. Lourdes in France is 651 mi (1048 km) from the Fatima pilgrimage in Portugal. To reach it, you would need to pass through Spain.

Lourdes Pilgrimage Historical Significance

Bernadette Soubirous, a fourteen-year-old young girl, is credited with establishing its sanctity and linking it to the immaculate conception.

Bernadette had apparitions of a white-robed lady of Lourdes 18 times between February and July of 1858 in a little grotto near Lourdes called Massabiele.

Bernadette realized she was the Blessed Virgin Mary on March 25, the day of the 16th apparition. Bernadette began digging in the dirt during her euphoric trance in the grotto until a little pool of water formed. Over the following several days, the puddle grew into a pool. Eventually becoming the hallowed spring that Lourdes is famous for.

Primarily a regional pilgrimage site, the spring earned a reputation for its medicinal qualities as healing miracles began to be documented.

From 1864 through to 1872, the site was primarily a regional pilgrimage site for prayer, receiving roughly 30,000 visitors per year. Initially, the shrine was not recognized for its medicinal potential, but after 1873, when reports of healings at the spring began to circulate, the shrine quickly gained a national reputation for possessing therapeutic abilities.

The small church, built above the grotto in 1876, was ultimately overcrowded, and an enormous basilica of faith was built in 1958 to accommodate the growing number of pilgrims.

Weather And Climate Of Lourdes Pilgrimage

Due to its proximity to the Atlantic, Lourdes has an oceanic climate. It is very pleasant for most of the year.

It receives adequate rainfall in the summer and quite heavy rainfall in the winter. There are around 120 wet days and more than 39 in (100 cm) of rainfall annually. Summers are hot, autumn and spring are cool, and winter is cold.

Due to its closeness to the Pyrenees, Lourdes may be impacted by periodic waves of frost in winter. In January 1985, the temperature went down to -17 F (9 C). In August 2003, the temperature reached 102 F (39 C).

Other Tourist Attractions Of Lourdes Pilgrimage

From March through to October each year, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes attracts a large number of pilgrims from Europe and other areas of the world. Some Catholics think that the grotto's spring water has medicinal qualities.

Since 1860, an astonishing 200 million people have visited the shrine, and the Roman Catholic Church has formally announced 69 miraculous healings. Cures are evaluated using Church standards for authenticity and genuine miracle healing. There is no medical or psychological foundation other than the curative power of water.

The Sanctuary is visited by tours from all over the globe. Consumption of or swimming in the Lourdes water that wells out of the grotto are frequently associated with this pilgrimage.

In the era of the apparitions, the grotto was a common ground that the locals used for different purposes, such as grazing cattle animals and collecting firewood, and it had a reputation for being an unpleasant location.

Myroslav Nimciv designed the five-domed St. Mary's Ukrainian Catholic Church in Lourdes, while Jerzy Nowosielski created the Byzantine interior polychrome decorations and Petro Kholodny created the iconostasis. In 1982, the church was dedicated.

It is roughly 10 minutes away from the rosary basilica and the grotto, on a street named after Ukraine, Rue de l'Ukraine, which is located on a short plot of land near the railroad station. The building's height, apparent from the basilica, compensates for its small breadth.