"Flor de Lourdes de Milagros"

Flor de Lourdes de Milagros (Spanish for Flower of the Lourdes of Miracles) is the name of a woman who came to see me at the Medical Office in Lourdes on September 29, 2006.

Why this unusual name? She explained it to me:

"I am originally from Nicaragua. My grandfather was a doctor, but before that, he had been a seminarian. During a sabbatical year, he met a pretty young woman and married her, on the advice of his superior who had wisely told him: I prefer a good husband to a bad priest.

For ten years however, they had no children. My grandfather went to a medical congress in Montpellier, France, and while there, he felt he had to go to Lourdes. Soon after he returned home, his wife became pregnant. On September 5, 1931, they had a daughter—my mother—whom they named Maria Lourdes. She in turn called me Flor de Lourdes de Milagros!"

Her grandfather became a senator of the Republic of Nicaragua and, in gratitude to Our Lady of Lourdes, he turned his large South American house into a clinic for the poor, San Juan de Dios Hospital – an extension of Lourdes in Nicaragua (1).

(1) Excerpt from Dr. Theillier’s book Lourdes, terre de guérisons (Lourdes: A Place of Healing), Artège Pocket Publisher (2019)

Dr. Patrick Theillier, former Director of the Office of Medical Observations of the Shine of Lourdes