THOUSANDS OF IRISH Catholics make a pilgrimage to Lourdes each year to visit the site where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a peasant girl.
Now, thousands are flocking to churches around the country to view the relics of St Bernadette.
Bernadette Soubirous was born into a poor family in Lourdes in 1844 and it is said that the Virgin Mary first appeared to her on 11 February 1858 – 17 further such apparitions are said to have occurred.
The relics of St Bernadette arrived in Ireland for the first time ever on 4 September and will return to Lourdes on 5 November after a tour of every diocese in the country.
Relics are intended to remind the faithful of the holiness of a saint and their cooperation in God’s work.
There are three classes of relics.
A first class relic is a part of the saint’s body, second class relics are objects that were personally used by the saint, while third class relics are items that have touched a first or second class relic or an item touched by the saint.
The relics currently touring Ireland are first class relics of St Bernadette containing pieces of bone and hair.
The relics of St Bernadette were in Belfast yesterday and today made their way to the Cathedral of St Patrick & St Colman in Newry, Co Down.
Further stops are planned in Dundalk, Mullingar, Dublin, Cavan, Leitrim, Cork, and Athlone, before a farewell ceremony in Kiltoom in Co Roscommon.
Massive crowds turned out today in Newry, with some people abandoning their place in line after a 45 minute wait.
Others ignored the main door and used side entrances in an attempt to beat the queues.
Many of those who came to see the relics were religious, but some just wanted to see what the fuss was about.
“Neither of us are religious, but we saw the lines and just popped out of work,” said one person standing at the end of a queue that reached the bottom of the cathedral steps.
“We don’t really know a lot about it, other than it’s St Bernadette of Lourdes and she’s been canonised or something.
“But we thought it won’t do us any harm.”
But Brenda Cunningham from nearby Kilkeel said it was an “honour” to visit the relics and that she felt “very privileged”.
She has been to Lourdes before and noted that some elderly people who want to travel to Lourdes may not be able to do so.
“It’s very beautiful to have the relics here and if you have faith, you will get something out of it,” she said.
Suzanne Monroe, a teacher from the local Sacred Heart Grammar School, brought a class to view the relics.
She told The Journal that it’s “an amazing opportunity” and noted that many people may not be able to afford a pilgrimage to Lourdes.
This was picked up on by Newry priest Canon Francis Brown, who described the relics as “Lourdes at home”.
“It’s a great joy and it’s a way for us to experience Lourdes in a different way,” he said.
He noted that the diocese is following all the venerations and prayers that happen during a pilgrimage to Lourdes to “make it as like the pilgrimage as we possibly can”.
While church attendances have been dwindling, Brown told The Journal that attendances in Newry have increased since emerging from the Covid pandemic.
He added that welcoming the relics of St Bernadette “might be an opportunity for those who haven’t been coming, to come back and practice more regularly.”
On 11 February 1858, Bernadette went to the Massabielle rock in Lourdes to gather wood.
It was there that Bernadette heard a sound “like a gust of wind” and is said to have seen the Virgin Mary.
Seventeen further apparitions followed until 16 July 1858 and Massabielle rock now forms part of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.
St Bernadette said that the Virgin Mary herself proclaimed “I am the Immaculate Conception” during one apparition.
The Immaculate Conception is the Catholic doctrine that Mary was conceived without original sin.
It was during the ninth apparition when Our Lady of Lourdes was said to have directed Bernadette to a place where she discovered a spring.
That spring is the central focus of a pilgrimage to Lourdes and many people have claimed to have been cured by drinking or bathing in it.
There have also been 70 such cases recognised as miracles by the Catholic Church.
The last recognised miracle was in 2018 when a French nun recovered from a decades-old back problem that prevented her from walking normally.
Shortly after returning home, her chronic sciatica or pinched spinal nerve disappeared for the first time since her condition was diagnosed at the age of 27.
The Catholic Church defines a miracle as a “sign or wonder such as a healing, or control of nature, which can only be attributed to divine power”.
For something to be formally recognised by the Church as a miracle, two-thirds of a medical board consisting of at least six doctors are required to sign a statement affirming that the supposed miraculous event cannot be explained by natural causes.
The Apparitions of Lourdes were authenticated in 1866 by the Bishop of Tarbes and in the same year, Bernadette left Lourdes to live out her religious vocation within the community of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, a convent in the town of Nevers.
Bernadette died on 16 April 1879 and when her body was exhumed on 18 April 1925, it was found to be uncorrupted.
She was made a saint on 8 December 1933.
Thousands of pilgrims make the visit to Lourdes from Ireland every year.
It was Irish priest William Ring who organised the first English-speaking pilgrimage to the French town in 1883, just 25 years after the apparition.
Lourdes shrines and grottos then appeared around the country in an effort to bring Lourdes to Ireland.
And it was Irish Catholics who gifted the Gold Crown to the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary at Lourdes in 1924.
It is said that some people donated their only items of value, their wedding rings, to enable the construction of the Gold Crown.
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