Why is the Lourdes pilgrimage a place of pilgrimage?

Answer 1

In 1858 the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France. Bernadette was instructed to dig, a stream of water miraculously appeared, and is claimed to have healing powers. Many of the sick come from around to world in hopes of having incurable ailments cured. Many cures are documented, there is a hospital there.

For more in formation:

Go to you tube and type in "Lourdes: Miracle City - France" for some really good information. I'm using it for my assessment :)
In 1858 a girl called Bernadette Soubirous saw Our Lady 18 times. She is now known as Saint Bernadette. Since that time millions of people have come to visit the site at which the apparitions happened. See the related link below to another question for some more information.

Lourdes is a place of pilgrimage today because of Saint Bernadette seeing and speaking to the Virgin Mary there. Many religious experiences have taken place there and people have said to be cured by the water at Lourdes. This is a special place for Catholics.

Lourdes is a place of pilgrimage because in 1858, a local village girl Bernadette Soubirous claimed to have seen visions of the Virgin Mary in a grotto near the village. A spring that subsequently gushed from the cave was said to have healing properties.

Lourdes soon became a place for pilgrimage for many Catholics in the surrounding areas both for prayer and for healing in the waters.

Nowadays, Lourdes is a town that is much larger. I visited Lourdes a couple of years ago partly as a holidaymaker and partly as a pilgrim, despite not being a Catholic (but still a Christian). However, nowadays Christians of all denominations descend on the town to make a pilgrimage to the grotto.

The town, however, is quite horrid. Every other shop is a souvenir shop devoted to cheap plastic effigies of the Virgin Mary or other tourist tat. It is reminiscent of the traders in the Temple that Jesus drove out. However, if you can get past all this commercialism, the area surrounding the Basilica and the grotto is very different.

Immediately one feels in a special place, where commercialism is left behind and instead prayer and worship happen round the clock, and where there is a real feel of God's presence and peace. Whatever the origins of the apparition of Mary the place is still very special and worthy of its place as one of the great centres for pilgrimage.

As for the healing properties of the water, thousands go there every year, and, whilst not all are cured physically, invariably spiritual healing takes place. However, despite the lack of a high percentage of cures, there are many hundreds each year whose recoveries cannot be explained by normal medical science.

Answer 2

In 1858, Mary, the Mother of God appeared to a 14 year-old girl in Lourdes named Bernadette Soubirous eighteen times over the course of the year. On February 25, 1858, Bernadette recounts these events during the apparition:

" (The Lady) told me that I should go and drink at the fountain and wash myself. Seeing no fountain I went to drink at the Gave. She said it was not there; she pointed with her finger that I was to go in under the rock. I went, and I found a puddle of water which was more like mud, and the quantity was so small that I could hardly gather a little in the hollow of my hand. Nevertheless I obeyed, and started scratching the ground; after doing that I was able to take some. The water was so dirty that three times I threw it away. The fourth time I was able to drink it. She made me eat grass growing in the same place where I had drunk; once only; I do not know why. Then the Vision disappeared and I went home" (link added).

The next day, it was discovered that where the muddy puddle of water had been, a spring of water was now there, flowing powerfully. There have been many accounts of miracles happening at this spring of water, the first approved miracle being Catherine Latapie on March 1, 1858, only three days after the discovering of the spring. "Catherine Latapie, nine months pregnant, walked 9 kilometers from her home in the neighboring village of Loubajac to bathe here paralyzed arm in the 'healing' spring. Healed on the site, she returned home to immediately give birth to a son."

The miracles that occur are fully and extensively examined by both clergy members and medical professionals, and very few are pronounced to be approved miracles.

Mary also told Bernadette to tell the priest to build a church at the site of the apparitions. The priest was very skeptical at first and did not respond to Bernadette's request. He told Bernadette "If the lady wants her chapel, let her tell you her name, and ask her to make the rosebush at the grotto flower." After asking "the Lady" another four times what her name was, she revealed that she was the Immaculate Conception, or in other words, conceived without sin. As Bernadette was seven or eight years behind her schooling and was just learning to read and write due to her family's severe poverty, she had no idea what this meant. The church was finally built and completed on April 4, 1864. It continues to be a site of pilgrimage to this day.