Lourdes reopens to visitors

After two years of closure due to the pandemic, the grotto of Lourdes (southern France) reopened to pilgrims on February 11, 2022, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the first day of the apparitions of the Virgin to the young Bernadette Soubirous.

For the past two years, because of Covid, pilgrims had to view the grotto of the sanctuary of Lourdes from a distance. Now visitors can again approach the grotto, and "pass through the hollow of the Rock of Massabielle, underneath the Virgin Mary, the Immaculate Conception, touch the rock, and get close to the spring," the Shrine was happy to announce.

It was also on February 11, 1858, that the Virgin Mary appeared for the first time to Bernadette Soubirous. A simple and sickly young girl, she went to look for wood near the rock of Massabielle in Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées, southwestern France), when a beautiful Lady dressed in white appeared to her. Until July 1858, she appeared 18 times. The culminating point was the apparition of Thursday, March 25, the feast of the Annunciation, when the Virgin Mary introduced herself to Bernadette as the "Immaculate Conception."

Before the pandemic, some 3.5 million pilgrims would come to this shrine each year. Now they are coming back in great numbers to pray to our Heavenly Mother for the conversion of this troubled and divided world.

Adapted from : Aleteïa