Every year, 6 million pilgrims descend upon the town of Lourdes. Explore how the town’s history and developments in the Catholic Church made it so popular.

In 1858, 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous, purportedly saw visions of the Virgin Mary by a spring in Lourdes, a tiny French town in a remote corner of the Pyrenees Mountains. It was almost unbelievable that the Virgin Mary decided to reveal herself to Soubirous, a poverty-stricken, sickly, illiterate girl. The town was immediately thrown into upheaval, with some questioning the veracity of the apparitions and others trying to see the sight themselves. Nobody else besides Soubirous ever saw the apparitions. But the spring besides the Grotto where she saw the apparitions was later revealed to have healing powers. The town was put on the map, and pilgrimages started soon after, continuing to this day. 

The story of how Lourdes became so popular is intricately linked to the developments in the Catholic Church. After the horrors of the French Revolution, Catholics found solace in miracles, pilgrimages and processions. The 19th century was an era of Catholic revival, with an increase in devotion to the Virgin Mary. In 1854, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, meaning Mary was preserved from original sin. The appearance of Mary just four years after that proclamation threw the town into great excitement. The apparitions at Lourdes and the subsequent pilgrimages fit into the pattern of Catholic revival of the time.

That century also saw the consolidation of papal power in Rome. Papal authority became more prominent as Catholics became increasingly loyal to Rome. While there were other alleged Marian apparitions reported in the 19th century, Lourdes became the most famous because it had the Vatican stamp of approval. Pope Pius IX declared Lourdes an official pilgrimage site in 1876, demonstrating the increasingly tight link of remote villages to Rome.

The pilgrimages to Lourdes also reflect the expanding reach of the globalizing Catholic Church. Pilgrims going to Lourdes were not limited to Europeans; they came from all over the world. According to John T. McGreevy, a Bengali journalist made the trip to Lourdes and found “infallible proof” of God. Vietnamese soldiers in France during World War I toured Lourdes soon after their arrival. The diverse group of people who visit Lourdes show that the Catholic Church has become a transnational institution.

Not only did the diverse array of visitors reflect the globalization of the Catholic Church, but the export of Lourdes to places around the world proved the same. Not long after people first became fascinated with Lourdes, aspects of Lourdes diffused to the home countries of visitors. The result was the creation of numerous replicas of Lourdes Grottos around the world, from the Vatican Gardens to Northern Indiana to Aruba. 

Today, Lourdes is a vibrant community—much more than the sleepy village of 1858—that attracts 6 million visitors annually from around the world. But tradition is still observed. Catholic Masses take place daily in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, and processions are still a common occurrence. People bathe in the water from the springs, hoping for a miraculous healing. Despite the global reach of the village of Lourdes, it still manages to preserve the Catholicism that brought it to fame.

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Bryan is currently a History and Global Affairs major at the University of Notre Dame. He aims to apply the notion of Integral Human Development as a framework for analyzing global issues. He enjoys hiking and visiting national parks.