Pilgrimage to Lourdes
By Martin Stott

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The Lourdes story begins in 1858, when a poor 14-year-old French girl saw a ghostly woman in white, in a shallow cave near the town. Over a month, Bernadette Soubirous saw the woman eight times. The vision said she was the Virgin Mary, she said she wanted a chapel built on the site and for people to come in procession, and she revealed that spring.

From the very early days, the spring water showed miraculous qualities. First, a woman with a paralyzed hand was healed. More cures followed and the crowds haven't stopped since.

Today they come by train, as well as plane and coach, on pilgrimage to Bernadette's grotto. So many are ill they've had to build several hospitals to help care for them while they're here. Lourdes is a strange place. The narrow, windy streets leading to the grotto area are packed with gift shops full of religious rubbish: plastic water bottles in the shape of Mary, pictures of Christ being crucified with eyes that blink, and religious alarm clocks.

Even descendants of Bernadette's family own a gift shop here. It seems obscene, but Phillipe Nierdoll, president of the Religious Retailers Association in Lourdes, denies the shops are in bad taste.

Nierdoll: We would not have these shops, and so many, if there were not a need, as we say, un besoin de consumateur. The only explanation is the size of the crowds becoming to Lourdes four and a half to five million visitors this represents so many persons, which is why we see so many shops.

And he's right, there is a need. Pilgrims crowd 'round the shelves buying the stuff. Maybe the miracle of Lourdes is that it sells. But once you get near the grotto, the shops end. The area feels and is sacred. There are now three chapels here and a huge underground basilica where up to 25,000 people can take mass.

Afterwards, processions are led from the basilica to the grotto at night by candlelight. It's an impressive sight. The spring water has been put on tap so people can drink and bottle it. They also queue to bathe in it. Seventeen special baths have been built near the grotto. Volunteers lead you in, help you undress, throw a cold wet towel over you to hide your modesty, and then it's a quick chilly dunk.

You freeze to death. You wish to God, Our Lady took you there and then. But then, when you come out and you're dry, you don't look for a towel. You just get dressed after being in the bath of ice water and you say to yourself, definitely there's something here. It's brilliant.

I'm afraid I wasn't persuaded! Officially, the Catholic Church says there have been only 65 miracles at Lourdes. Hundreds of unrecognized, unexplained cures have happened here too, but that must still mean millions go away disappointed. How do they cope? I asked Stephen Fethney. He has muscular dystrophy. It killed his brother and sister and now confines him to a wheelchair. This is his fourteenth visit and over time, he's come to genuinely appreciate the meaning of the place.

Fethney: I got to understand it isn't necessarily the physical thing that's being healed, it's actually coming to terms with your disability.

Stott: So that's what's happened to you that has been your miracle?

Fethney: That's what's happened to me. And when I come to Lourdes now I actually see the joy in other pilgrims' eyes who have come for the first time and go away not being physically cured or throwing away crutches or anything like that, but they have more of an understanding of their disability and can cope with their disability.

It's nearly one o'clock in the morning in the Carrefour Café in Lourdes and these volunteers are relaxing and they deserve to. They give up six days each year to come and help disabled and chronically ill pilgrims and they come back each year. The café's run by the Guinguene family, who also own one of the best hotels in Lourdes, the Grand Hotel de la Grotte. Olivia Guingeune says she feels privileged to witness the mini-miracles that happen here.

Guingeune: I think when they've left Lourdes even if they are dying people, they know they won't be cured but I think they're very happy to have been in Lourdes and they go back happy that they have been here, they go back satisfied, that's absolutely certain.

You can't help but be moved by the courage, by the caring, sharing and joy you witness here. I'm not dying, I'm not disabled but I had a miracle experience too somewhere near that grotto I lost a great big chunk of cynicism.