Scottish bishops were among those who set off this week on the annual Hosanna House and Children’s Pilgrimage Trust pilgrimage to Lourdes, which involves around 2,200 pilgrims, including 1000 children.
They included Archbishop Leo Cushley of Saint Andrews and Edinburgh, Bishop Joseph Toal of Motherwell and Bishop Frank Dougan of Galloway, a chaplain to Scotland’s HCPT Group 116.
The Easter Week pilgrimage was started in 1956 and key events this year, when all 104 groups come together, were the torchlight procession on 2 April, with the trust Mass and Blessed Sacrament procession on 4 April.
The trust Mass in the cavernous Underground Basilica was a highlight of the week, broadcast on the internet so that families and friends could take part. HCPT in Scotland was coordinating liturgies, taking the theme “Let Your Light Shine” from Matthew 5:16.
Groups were from throughout the UK and Ireland along with international groups from Italy, Poland and the US. Andy Clare of HCPT told The Tablet they were “absolutely delighted to return to Lourdes for HCPT's Easter 2024 pilgrimage”.
“I'm immensely proud of our dedicated team of volunteer helpers, chaplains, and nurses who join us in making a profound difference in the lives of so many disabled and disadvantaged children and young people,” he said.
The groups were prominent this week throughout the French pilgrimage town, where Marian apparitions took place in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous.
In colourful hats, sweat shirts and arrays of badges they could be seen holding group prayers near the grotto, visiting the humble home – in fact the town’s prison – of the Soubirous family, walking in the candlelight procession with luminous headgear and singing hymns with actions at pavement cafés.
Sixty clergy celebrated Masses with groups at various chapels around Lourdes and in the Sheepfold Chapel of the City of the Poor on a hill above Lourdes, a replica of the sheepfold where Bernadette cared for sheep in nearby Bartres.
During the week there was also a meeting to advance the cause for canonisation of the founder of HCPT, Brother Michael Strode.
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