Lourdes

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This article is about The French pilgrimage location. For The Brazilian town, see Lourdes, Brazil.

The famous town of Lourdes is situated in the Southwest of the Hautes-Pyrénées department, lying in the first Pyrenean foothills. It is overlooked from the south by the Pyrenean peaks of Aneto, Montaigu, Vignemale (3,298m), while around the town there are three summits reaching up to 1,000m, which are known as the Béout, the Petit Jer with its three crosses and the Grand Jer with its single cross which guard over the town lying below.

Lourdes was originally a small unremarkable market town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees. At that time the most prominent feature was the fortified castle which rises up from the centre of the town on a rocky escarpment. Following the Apparitions of Our Lady to Bernadette, Lourdes has developed into a major tourist destination as a Marian city. Today Lourdes has a population of some 17,000 inhabitants but is able to take in some 5,000,000 pilgrims and tourists every season. Lourdes has the second greatest number of hotels in France after Paris with some 270 establishments.

Lourdes lies at an altitude of 1,375 ft (420 m) and in a central position through which runs the Gave de Pau River from the south coming from Gavarnie, into which flow several smaller rivers from Barèges and Cauterets. The Gave then branches off to the west towards the Béarn, running past the banks of the grotto and on downstream to Pau and then Biarritz.

1 History
2 The sanctuary of Lourdes
3 Hospitalité Notre-Dame de Lourdes
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

Image:VirgendeLourdes.JPG In February 1858, a 14-year-old local girl, Bernadette Soubirous claimed the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to her in the remote Grotto of Massabielle^{[citation needed]}. A statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was erected at the site in 1864. Over the years, Lourdes has become one of the world's leading Marian shrines.

[edit] The sanctuary of Lourdes

Yearly from March to October the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is the place of mass pilgrimages from Europe and other parts of the world. The spring water from the grotto is believed by some to possess healing properties. An estimated 200 million people have visited the shrine since 1860 [1], and the Roman Catholic Church has officially recognized 68 miracle healings. Especially impressive are candlelight and sacrament processions. Tours from all over the world are organised to visit the Sanctuary. The pilgrimage site is visited by millions of Catholics each year. Connected with this pilgrimage is often the consumption of or bathing in the Lourdes Water which wells out of the Grotto – the cave in which the apparitions took place in 1858. It is to be noted that the grotto was previously known as a shrine to the Greek goddess Persephone.

[edit] Hospitalité Notre-Dame de Lourdes

Main article: Hospitalité Notre Dame de Lourdes

During one of the Virgin Mary’s apparitions to Saint Bernadette in 1858, she asked that people come in procession to the Grotto. Ever since then there has been a ‘ministry of welcome’ in Lourdes, receiving and caring for all the pilgrims who come to the apparition site, especially the sick and infirm.

The HNDL is active in Lourdes during the main pilgrimage season (which normally lasts from Easter until November), and it also provides people to welcome pilgrims at the Piscines (Baths) during the winter. nicholas mellios