A Pilgrimage to Lourdes

Regardless of your faith, it's impossible not to feel moved when visiting the beautiful town of Lourdes, one of the world's most important pilgrimage sites. Every year, five million visitors make the journey here, some seeking miraculous cures from the spring's waters. (The Catholic Church has only confirmed a handful of cases as full-fledged miracles.)

In 1858 the tiny village of Lourdes was catapulted into fame when Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year old peasant girl, saw the Virgin Mary in 18 separate appearances in a remote grotto. On the 9th appearance, Bernadette was told to drink at a fountain, where none was present. She scratched the ground and discovered a spring beneath rock and clay, which bubbles to this day. It was during the 16th vision when Our Lady of Lourdes identified herself as the "Immaculate Conception," words that later proved to the town priests and the Catholic Church that the illiterate Bernadette had indeed witnessed true, supernatural, and divine apparitions.

We visited on the day after Christmas. The town was quiet, mysterious, and still. In the summer months, mobs of people flood the three religious complexes; one is actually an underground church capable of seating 20,000 folks. The rock in Bernadette's cave is worn smooth by the millions of hands which have touched it.