A new film about Lourdes comes to boost "the Church’s immune system"

Pilgrims file through the Grotto caressing the rock with their hands, going to fill bottles with water from the spring, and lighting candles. Captured with great discretion, these gestures of faith brought to the screen in a documentary simply titled "Lourdes" have moved more than 200,000 viewers.

To quote Brother Frank Dubois, who led the Rosary Pilgrimage in October 2019, this film "shouts out God’s name." It offers glimpses into what is commonly called "popular piety," those expressions of the faith that are found in pilgrimages, the recitation of the Rosary, participation in processions, or veneration of relics. Far from disappearing, popular piety, which Pope Francis said constitutes "the Church’s immune system," is making a comeback.

Evidence of this is the popular success of the Saint John festival in Porto Vecchio, southern Corsica. Or the procession of the Holy Headdress—venerated as one of the mortuary cloths that wrapped the head of Christ—in the streets of Cahors (southern France) in April 2019, for the first time since 1940. Its turnout almost surprised the local bishop, Bishop Laurent Camiade: "It touches the hearts of people we cannot attract with overly intellectual events," he admitted. “They feel close to something they can see and almost touch." In other places around France, small shrines once neglected or forgotten are again attracting the faithful, like a replica of the Lourdes Grotto in a neighborhood of Le Havre in northwestern France.

La Croix