Catholics in Wales have celebrated the restoration of a much-loved shrine that marks the place where Mary is believed to have rescued a boy from drowning, and that has been inaccessible for almost a decade.
The shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes, in Abercynon in the Cynon Valley, near Cardiff, was rededicated by the Archbishop of Cardiff, George Stack.
The Archbishop, who last weekend was in Rome for the Canonisation of St John Henry Newman, said the rededication was “just as important” in the life of the local Church.
In his homily, he said: "Need I say more about the beautiful shrine which was created here by your forebears? It is a place of nature, a place of beauty, a place of running waters. It is place of danger where two fast flowing rivers come together. It is a place of faith also. But faith has to be kept alive. Human memory is a fickle thing."
The shrine marks the place where, in 1926, a three-year-old boy, Gerald O’Shea, from the former mining village, fell into the coal-blackened confluence of the Rivers Taff and Cynon. When he returned home he said he had been rescued from the water by a lady in blue – the lady on his religious medallion.
A shrine to mark the miracle was cut into the steep rocky cliffs by striking miners, many of them migrants from Italy and Ireland, and it became a place of pilgrimage that drew 10,000 pilgrims a year. But over time it became overgrown, and the path to the shrine crumbled and became unsafe.
It was forgotten until Fr John Phillips took over the church of St Thomas, above the shrine, and, along with a group of parishioners, began the work of clearing the brambles and knotweed from the path and restoring the shrine itself after a decade of neglect.
The team also restored the badly damaged and crumbling Stations of the Cross that line the path leading down to the riverside grotto and removed the overgrown Japanese knotweed. Landscaping work transformed what was an overgrown wilderness into a peaceful place where people could sit and pray in tranquil surroundings.
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