“Many pilgrims have traveled to Lourdes over the years to pray alongside St. Bernadette and now it seems that Lourdes is coming to us with the visit of the relics,” said one bishops.
Gaudium Press, English Edition (28/11/2021 1:25 PM, Gaudium Press) The Conference of Bishops of England and Wales has announced that in 2022, the relics of St. Bernadette Soubirous, the seer of Lourdes, are to tour the major cathedrals and churches of England, Scotland and Wales, offering Catholics the opportunity to venerate them and ask for her intercession.
The visit of the relics was an initiative of the Lourdes Shrine itself
According to Canon Christopher Thomas, general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, it was the Lourdes Shrine in the French Pyrenees itself that took the initiative to approach the Bishops of Great Britain by making the offer of a pilgrimage of the relics.
“It was a sincere offer made by the shrine of Lourdes. The Bishops saw it not only as something that will remind us of the importance of pilgrimages in our lives and the importance of the place of Lourdes in the lives of many Catholics and Dioceses in this country, but will remind us of the centrality of the lives of the Saints, because that always points us to that greater degree of virtue to which we are called in our life of the Catholic Faith,” Thomas pointed out.
Lourdes comes to us with the visit of the relics
“Many pilgrims have traveled to Lourdes over the years to pray alongside St. Bernadette and now it seems that Lourdes comes to us with the visit of the relics,” said one of the Bishops. In 2009 the relics of St. Theresa of Lisieux caused thousands of people to queue up to venerate them.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, pilgrimages from Britain to the shrine in Lourdes were reduced. The French Marian shrine is one of the most popular in the world, with more than 100,000 volunteers welcoming more than 5 million pilgrims and visitors annually, including more than 50,000 sick and disabled people. (EPC)
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
