Cardinal Vincent Nichols declared that “Lourdes has come to Westminster” earlier this week, as the relics of St Bernadette left his archdiocese and commenced their journey around Britain.
In a special homily given to mark the departure of the relics from Westminster Cathedral, Cardinal Nichols prayed that the “grace and witness, given and received here, will likewise be given to many, many thousands of other people”.
The visit of the relics to Westminster has, he said, “reminded us of the great importance of our faith in our society today, expressed in prayer and service, gathered and strengthened in the community of the Church”. This week the relics will visit the Cathedral Church of St Michael and George in Aldershot, home to the Bishopric of the Forces.
On Thursday 8 September the relics will arrive in the Diocese of Portsmouth, where, Bishop Philip Egan stated, he expected “many graces” from the visit, including “healing, conversion, and the wonderful discovery of vocation”.
In advance of the relics’ arrival in Shrewsbury Cathedral on Tuesday 13 September, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, Mark Davies, stated that he hoped Bernadette’s life would inspire Catholics to answer the “universal call to holiness”.
The relics’ journey around Britain will see the remains of St Bernadette make special visits to Scotland’s Carfin Grotto, HMP Wormwood Scrubs and both the Anglican and the Catholic cathedrals of Liverpool. The tour, first announced in November 2021, also includes a stop in HMP Wormwood Scrubs, on 30 October. The Ukrainian Catholic and Syro-Malabar eparchies will also host the relics for a day, in London and Preston respectively. When first announced, the visit was compared to the tour of Therese of Liseux’s relics in 2009, which attracted unexpectedly high numbers.
Bernadette Soubirous, the child of a miller from Lourdes, southern France, experienced visions of Mary, Mother of Christ, between 11 February and 16 July 1858. After a canonical investigation, Church authorities declared the visions “worthy of belief” in 1862, and Lourdes rapidly became a major site of pilgrimage. Around 70 miracles attributed to the intercession of Our Lady of Lourdes have been validated by the Church to date. Bernadette was canonised in 1933, and her remains were preserved in a shrine in the town of Nevers, central France, the location of the convent Bernadette joined in 1866 and died in in 1879. They are now ordinarily held in the Upper Basilica of Lourdes, which before the coronavirus pandemic hosted around 3.5 million pilgrims a year.
The relics of Lourdes visionary Saint Bernadette’s two-month-long tour of England, Wales and Scotland will take in every diocese in England and Wales, before concluding on 1 November. Full details and dates can be found on the tour’s dedicated website.
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