POPE BENEDICT XVI devoted his last Mass in Lourdes yesterday to the sick, reconfirming the priority that is conferred upon those suffering from handicaps or illness, writes Lara Marlowein Lourdes.
In Lourdes there are red wheelchair lanes painted on the pavements. Men walk through the streets shouting "Les Malades, Les Malades" to clear the way for the sick. Hundreds of thousands of believers volunteer each year to be hospitaliers - those who care for a disabled person non-stop for several days.
"Without the sick," Bishop of Lourdes Jacques Perrier says, "Lourdes would become a Catholic Disneyland."
The pope's speeches in Lourdes showed a certain talent for lilting allegory. The homily concentrated on the smile of the Virgin Mary, "which is directed quite particularly to those who suffer, so that they can find comfort and solace therein. Mary first taught Bernadette to know her smile, this being the most appropriate point of entry into the revelation of her mystery", the pope said, recounting the "apparitions" of 150 years ago.
"Within the smile of the Virgin lies mysteriously hidden the strength to fight against sickness . . . the grace to accept without fear or bitterness to leave this world at the hour chosen by God."
After his homily Pope Benedict anointed 10 pilgrims in wheelchairs, including Clare Kirby (55), from Walshestown, near Mullingar.
Mrs Kirby suffers from multiple sclerosis. Alhough the disease was diagnosed 18 years ago, she was able to continue annual pilgrimages to Lourdes as a blue-coated volunteer. "This is the first time I'm too ill to do it," she said. So when Fr Joe Gallagher of the Meath diocease was asked for the name of a sick Irish person, he immediately said: "It's Clare."
More than a quarter of the 1,500 Meath pilgrims now in Lourdes are sick or are those accompanying them: volunteer nurses, doctors, stretcher-bearers, handmaids or chaplains. Mrs Kirby was told on Sunday night that she would be anointed by the pope yesterday morning.
"I thought maybe I might be cured," she said. "Then I prayed to all the people who are dead, to my mother and father and a good lot of friends, and I asked them to whisper to Our Lady, so she might intercede with Our Father . . . "
The church has officially recognised 67 miracles in Lourdes since 1858, although thousands more people believe they have benefited from divine intervention.
"I'd put up with it if I'm left the way I am," Mrs Kirby told me. "I have bad pain in my back, but I still enjoy life. Sometimes I'm angry, but never with God. If I was feeling sorry for myself, I'd say I got a raw deal in life."
Whatever disappointment Mrs Kirby felt at the absence of a miracle was outweighed by her celebrity status in Lourdes.
A few minutes after the pontiff dabbed oil on her forehead and upturned palms, called her name and prayed for her in English, I met Mrs Kirby in the courtyard of the Accueil Notre Dame Hospital.
"I need a cigarette!" she exclaimed, rummaging through her handbag for a lighter. "You were up there several times, on the big screen," a fellow pilgrim told her. "I used to be in all the musicals on stage, showing my legs," Mrs Kirby laughed.
Her face was radiant, the hugs, kisses and congratulations from priests, nurses and her fellow sick people unending: "I'm awfully proud of you," "Great! Well done!" "Where's your halo, Clare?"
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, stopped to shake Mrs Kirby's hand.
She was wheeled into the hospital canteen by Phil O'Reilly, the lead stretcher-bearer for the Meath pilgrims, who'd accompanied her on the steps of the Rosary Basilica.
A nurse called out: "Here's our celebrity!" And hundreds of Irish pilgrims burst into cheers.