Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Lourdes 7 November 2008


Grotte de Massabielle






We visited Lourdes on our way back from Pau a couple of weeks ago. Lourdes is a town of about 15 000 people which was made famous by a 14 year old peasant girl Bernadette who saw the Virgin Mary in a series of visions that came to her in a grotto. These days around 5million visitors come every year from all over the world many of them terminally ill and praying for a cure. There has been 67 medically certifiable cures over the years.

It was interesting to see what Lourdes was all about as I’d heard a lot about it over the years and wanted to see what it was like. There is a huge tourist complex built around the cave (Grotte de Massabielle) where Bernadette had her vision and there’s an ornately decorated church built right over the top of the cave.

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