Lourdes, Feb. 11, 2008 (CWNews.com) - More than 55,000 people descended on the Marian sanctuary in Lourdes, France on February 11 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Virgin's appearances there.
Custodians of the renowned shrine in southwest France expect several million pilgrims-- including Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news)-- to visit during anniversary celebrations that began last December 8 and will continue through the same date this year.
The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes drew what will likely be the largest congregation of the year, with 29 bishops and 800 priests concelebrating Mass for a congregation estimated at as many as 70,000 people.
Hotels and inns in the region, most of them closed for the winter season, had been re-opened for the weekend to accommodate the flood of visitors. Along with thousands of French Catholics, the congregation included noteworthy delegations from Germany, the US, Ireland, and Japan.
The shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes is built at the grotto of Massabielle, where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous, in a series of apparitions that continued through July 1858. The waters of Lourdes have been credited with healing thousands of people from a variety of physical ailments.
In December 2007, Pope Benedict XVI decreed a plenary indulgence for all those Catholics who travel to Lourdes during the anniversary year, as well as those who, between February 2 and February 11, pray before an image of Our Lady of Lourdes in a chapel or church.
[The exact terms of the decree are reproduced below.]
A) If between December 8, 2007 and December 8, 2008 they visit, preferably in the order suggested: (1) the parish baptistery used for the Baptism of Bernadette, (2) the Soubirous family home, known as the 'cachot,' (3) the Grotto of Massabielle, (4) the chapel of the hospice where Bernadette received First Communion; and on each occasion they pause for an appropriate length of time in prayer and with pious meditations, concluding with the recital of the Our Father, the Profession of Faith, ... and the jubilee prayer or other Marian invocation.
B) "If between February 2, 2008 ... and February 11, 2008, Feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Lourdes and 150th anniversary of the apparition, they visit, in any church, grotto, or decorous place, the blessed image of that same Virgin of Lourdes, solemnly exposed for public veneration; and before the image participate in a pious exercise of Marian devotion, or at least pause for an appropriate space of time in prayer and with pious meditations, concluding with the recital of the Our Father, the Profession of Faith, ... and the invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
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