Clifton Diocese Lourdes Pilgrimage

22 to 29 August 2008

This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the apparition of the Virgin Mary to 14 year-old Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, a town nestling in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southern France

To celebrate this event, pilgrims from the Clifton Diocese will go to Lourdes in the last week of August.  They will join thousands more from all over the world giving a true sense of a universal church. 

The story of a semi-literate 14 year-old girl from a poor family who received a series of visions of Our Lady between the 11 February and 16 July 1858 is well known. 

Equally, the accounts of spontaneous and miraculous healings associated with Lourdes are well known, but these events are much rarer than the popular imagination allows.

The message of Our Lady to Bernadette was not associated with physical healing in the conventional sense, but with prayer and penance. It was a message about the healing of the human soul; a message that spoke of the greatest need in human life, the need to know of God and be aware and alive to God.

In a pilgrimage a person physically and spiritually travels from where they were to where they hopefully aspire to be. In the experience of such a journey the awareness of the world as we know it, with all of its problems does not disappear, but through a deepening awareness of God, a transformation can and does take place which answers the deeper cares and concerns of life. The fears and anxieties that can dominate life can cease to be the grave distortions that they become.

The experience of journeying with and caring for other people in their circumstances of difficulty or suffering, can help to redefine the meaning of what success of failure in life really is. Think about making the pilgrimage this year - it may change your life!

A decree has been issued by the Vatican granting a plenary indulgence on the 150th Anniversary of the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

For more information about this special year of pilgrimage to Lourdes please contact Deacon Trevor Jones, the Pilgrimage Director, on 01823 270935.

We hope that as many people from around the Clifton Diocese are able to join Pilgrimage Leader, Bishop Declan Lang, on this special diocesan pilgrimage. 

You can find out more about Lourdes from the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales fascinating podcasts which you can listen to and download in the multimedia panel on the right. You can listen to Father Martin Moran, Chaplain at the sanctuary of Lourdes, Right Reverend Robert Ladds, Anglican Bishop of Whitby, Father Graeme Rowlands, Society of Mary and Richard King of the HCPT - The Pilgrimage Trust.

There is a also a special 150th anniversary website and the official Lourdes website – both packed with information. 

To subscribe to Clifton Diocese podcasts through iTunes click here.