One of the miracles at Lourdes is the booming trade in anything grotto-like. But beyond the holy water, magnets and sweets is a sense of calm that will break all but the hardest cynics, writes Kathy Sheridan
A DAY SPENT trudging up and down Rue de la Grotte is enough. Grot it surely is, and as it is, obviously, the route to the grotto, you are its captive audience.
Here on a sunny spring Monday in Lourdes, on the 150th anniversary of 14-year-old Bernardette Soubirous's first reported vision of Our Lady on a rock at Massabielle, the major tussle is not with scepticism but with vast, voluble packs of Italians, known universally as Elbows, identifiable by a penchant for fur coats and a sharp poke in the kidneys for anyone impeding their progress.
What the rush is for is a mystery. Lower Lourdes is one interminable bazaar, and the uses to which the image of Notre Dame de Lourdes, poised on a rock, can be applied are finite. At least the ubiquitous plastic jerrycans and the iconic Virgin Mary-shaped bottles serve a purpose. A poster-sized crucified Jesus who blinks, anyone? Holograms that morph from bearded Christ to peach-skinned Mary? St Bernadette used-tea-bag holders, Notre Dame barometers and, for those who fancy a soupcon of superstition with their religion, fridge magnets depicting the apparition on a horseshoe?
If the holy water at la grotte hasn't quite hit the spot, why not munch on some Pastilles à l'Eau de Lourdes, minty lozenges made of Lourdes water from a plastic bag bearing the image of the crowned Virgin and the words Je Suis l'Immaculéee Conception? Yum.
A sudden urge to escape the vast monument to Mammon called Cité Catholique culminates in a a tepid, costly coffee in an ice-cream parlour called - you guessed it - the Immaculate Conception.
The rare visitor who still comes to Lourdes looking for a tangible miracle will find it: the economy. It's a town of about 16,000 with a staggering 200 hotels - the most hotel beds in France outside Paris - with up to six million annual visitors, three times the hajj's pilgrims to Mecca.
Of those, says Lourdes Tourism, 72,000 are Irish, although Irish tour operators reckon they count both arrivals and departures at Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrénées International Airport, so the figure is probably half that. Nonetheless, it's a tidy number, and one that doesn't take into account the independent tourist who drops in for a day.
About 85 per cent of visitors are female, most are over 40 and, although Lourdes is on the cusp of Pyrenees, a perfect base for skiing, hiking, trekking and mountain biking, it remains a kind of international bubble.
Time and again, tour operators have attempted to develop the market to include, say, wine tasting and seaside or golf breaks, but to no avail.
Last year Pilgrimages Abroad GLA, a Dublin-based company, offered a package split between Lourdes and San Sebastian, across the border in Spain. "It just doesn't work with Lourdes," says Joe Malone of the firm. "The contrast is too much."
Even the day trips on offer - to medieval Carcassonne, vibrant Toulouse, St Jean de Luz by the sea or stylish Biarritz - fail to fire enthusiasm.
May Colbert, who leads her own Dublin pilgrimage, says the first question she is often asked is: "When are we going to Spain?" But that, she says wryly, "is usually for the cheap drink and smokes" (although the French smoking ban is working shockingly well, as dismayed Irish smokers are discovering).
Half-day trips prove the most attractive, and the mountain drive to the village of Gavarnie, in the French Pyrenees along the famous Tour de France route, past foaming waterfalls and birds of prey, is a popular one.
Some escape the bubble into Pau, about half an hour away by rail or car, where they encounter an attractive old French city, proper French cafes, old- fashioned shops and a (rather unsatisfactory) Galeries Lafayette.
The most popular outings, however, are Lourdes related: trips to the village of Bartres, a few kilometres away, where St Bernadette spent some of her childhood.
Another popular place to go is Betharram, where she once visited and where the water from the St Roc spring has reputedly miraculous healing powers for the eyes and cancer.
But the shrine is where the heart is. Few, if any, go to Lourdes any more seeking the traditional kind of miracle that instantly heals a tumour or a disability. Abandoned crutches no longer hang at the grotto.
But even entrenched cynics acknowledge the unnameable sense of calm that descends upon those crossing the frontier to the grotto, the point where the bustling, grasping commerce of the town fades and thoughts turn to another world, when people start rifling their pockets and bags to unearth petitions and photographs of loved ones to be entrusted to Our Lady.
A Dublin woman already carrying 80 separate petitions from friends sits on an icy bench, copying out dozens more from texts on her phone before depositing them in the petition box at the shrine.
In such a reverential atmosphere the prominent donation box alongside seems wildly incongruous, as does the Lourdes medal-vending machine (€2 a pop), the candles costing from €2.50 (our Dublin friend had bought and lit up to €170 worth on foot of requests and donations from friends at home) and the €18 charge for a Mass - all extracted within the shrine grounds.
But candles can be bought elsewhere, and Masses are of equal value in Louth or Lourdes.
The old Lourdes rituals can be followed without spending a cent, rituals that for countless pilgrims have brought a solace that set souls at ease and helped to reconcile so many to the most appalling suffering.
"I never saw a miracle here," says Limerick man Joe Hyde, a retired telephone engineer on his 60th trip. "But I knew a man with cancer who came here six weeks before he died and told me: 'I want you to know that I met peace.' "
The rituals still include the spectacular nightly torchlight processions and the immersion in the grotto's chilly baths.
It was the sight of a young, seriously ill girl, determinedly approaching the baths on an icy morning, and the urging of two staunch Dublin women that encouraged this writer to do the same.
Lourdes has a habit of making the able-bodied feel like wimps. In our own small group, people are outwardly content and busy. Yet, over a few days, something about their shared purpose enables many to talk about their troubles.
It's a quiet February evening in Lourdes. There is no sign of the legendary high jinks that accompany some pilgrim groups, although anecdote suggests that the heyday of rip-roaring 3am drinking sprees and sing-songs has passed anyway. "It all got a bit out of hand at one stage," says one old hand, "but, in many ways, letting off steam is just as important for some of the people coming here as the prayers."
So when you go in this 150th year, remember it's not all about piety (although the enormous holy-water bottles circling the baggage carousel at Dublin Airport tell their own story). Have your party piece ready.
Finding contentment in Lourdes
NINE YEARS AGO Mary T Fitzpatrick from Southhill in Limerick held her 19-year-old son, Michael, as he died in her arms only a few yards from home, with eight stab wounds to his body.
She was cleaning buses for a living and had three other children under 11, and Michael was a child who "never gave a moment's trouble . . . He always lightened my burden", she says softly. At his funeral, almost destroyed by grief, she vowed to follow him by taking her own life. "I was forced, yes forced, to come to Lourdes by Fr Joe Young, who gave it to me as a gift . . . For the first two days I walked around and just hated it. I thought everyone looked happy. I didn't know their troubles," she says.
But at Fr Young's suggestion she bought a sapling, and together they planted a "tree of hope" on a Lourdes hillside, a place that has become her spiritual home.
"Now when I'm packing to come to Lourdes people say: 'Are you going home?' I arrive, drop the suitcase and go straight up to the tree. I truly believe Michael is here . . . I feel he's close to me here. I feel contentment here and acceptance over his death. I wouldn't feel it as much in Limerick.
"Maybe it's because it was here that I was able to say for the first time: 'I know I'll never see him again.' Basically, I feel I handed him over to Our Lady."
Mary has founded Lost Futures, an organisation for bereaved parents. Its members will go on their third pilgrimage this summer, with Fr Young as their spiritual director.
Go there
Kathy Sheridan travelled to Lourdes with Pilgrimages Abroad GLA, 64 Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1. She stayed at Hotel Alba.
For more information on the trip to France, call 01-8731444 or e-mail pilgrimages@eircom.net
Other Marian shrines
Fatima, Portugal.This is probably the best known Marian shrine, with an estimated four million visitors a year. Its history as a place of veneration dates from May 1917, when three sheep-tending children, aged 10, nine and seven, saw an apparition of Our Lady so bright they initially took it to be lightning.
Joe Walsh Tours, which has a specialist pilgrimage division, offers a week's stay at the mid-range Santo Amaro Hotel, in Fatima, from €579 a person in June, including flights.
See www.santuario-fatima.pt and www.joewalshtours.com.
Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina.A more recent religious phenomenon is the Marian shrine at Medjugorje. These apparitions date from 1981, when they were seen by six young parishioners. The appararitions are reported to be ongoing. Although about 30 million people are estimated to have visited the shrine, not everyone is equally convinced of their veracity.
Joe Walsh Tours offers a dual-location package of three nights in Dubrovnik, in Croatia, and four days at the shrine in Medjugorje, from €599 in early June. See www.medjugorje.org.
Knock, Co Mayo.April is the official start of the season at our own Marian shrine. The shrine is open all year, but the main pilgrimage season runs from the final Sunday in April to the second Sunday in October. The town's religious significance dates to 1879, when Our Lady, St Joseph and
St John the Evangelist appeared "in a blaze of heavenly light" at the south gable of Knock Parish Church to a group of 15 locals. An estimated one and a half million pilgrims now make the journey to Knock each year.
There is a range of accommodation in the town, including a hostel, a caravan park and B&Bs priced from €36 a night a person. The three-star Knock House Hotel is offering three nights' bed and breakfast in April for €178.
See www.knock-shrine.ie.
... Sandra O'Connell