Carfin Grotto named Scotland’s National Marian Shrine

Carfin Grotto in North Lanarkshire, which recently hosted the relics of St Bernadette, has been named Scotland’s National Marian Shrine.

The Grotto, founded in 1922 as a replica of the site in Lourdes where St Bernadette Soubirous experienced visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858, hosted Bernadette’s relics between the 24 September and 1 October as part of the 2022 tour of the relics in Britain.

At a “National Mass” commemorating the site’s centenary, celebrating the visit of the relics to Carfin and marking the grotto’s naming as National Marian Shrine, the Bishops of Scotland concelebrated a Mass outdoors attended by hundreds of pilgrims.  Joseph Toal, Bishop of Motherwell and the grotto’s ordinary, paid tribute in his homily to Canon Thomas Nimmo Taylor, the founder of the shrine.

[...] Bernadette’s relics remained at Carfin till 1 October, with individual dioceses organising specific days of prayer and pilgrimage at the site. From there, the relics returned to England, beginning with the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle, and continuing their journey till 1 November, when they returned to France from the Ukrainian Catholic cathedral of London.

The relics visited Liverpool between the 15 and 20 September, where, in an ecumenical gesture, both the Anglican and Catholic dioceses in Liverpool played host to Bernadette’s remains.

Adapted from www.thetablet.co.uk