The 40th anniversary of the Madonna of bikers

The feast of the Madonna of bikers goes back to September 1979. It originated in the village of Porcaro in Brittany, France, and was idea of Fr. Louis Prévoteau, a Breton priest.

Fr. Prévoteau, then 44, arrived in Porcaro in 1967. Four years later, he was given his first motorcycle by the president of the local bikers club of Rennes (capital of Brittany), a long-time friend.

The priest wanted to do something in return for his biker friends. He saw their need for the spiritual, their search for meaning and their awareness of their own mortality, as accidents were numerous in the 1970s. This is how the Madonna of bikers was started. Fr. Prévoteau built a shrine–called a 'pardon' in Breton–in Mary’s honor, where bikers could rally and pray.

The gathering has grown from a few hundred participants to several thousand, even reaching as high as 20,000 in some years. In 2012, Bishop Centène, the local bishop, solemnly crowned the statue of the Madonna, on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. This consecration gave the Madonna of Bikers Chapel recognition as a Marian shrine.

Bikers come from all over France and Europe. "It’s kind of a mystery. This is one of the biggest gatherings in France and one of the biggest pilgrimages in Europe, and it’s organized by people who aren’t even bikers," says one of the organizers. The annual event requires a complex logistics infrastructure and hundreds of volunteers.

On the feast of the Assumption on August 15, 2019, between 10,000 and 12,000 bikers came to receive the special blessing of that feast.

Adapted from: Ouest France