Lourdes, France, Sep 14, 2008 / 11:10 am
Pope Benedict XVI’s helicopter touched down in Lourdes on Saturday evening to the sight of a multitude of pilgrims waiting to begin the Jubilee Way. After a torchlight procession, the Holy Father spoke to the pilgrims about how at Lourdes, Mary invites everyone to enter into God’s dialogue of love with man, a dialogue that finds physical expression at Lourdes.
The pilgrimage designed for the 150th anniversary celebration of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to St. Bernadette is known as the Jubilee Way and is comprised of four places associated with the French saint’s life. Seated in his popemobile, the Pope visited the first three stages of the Jubilee Way and paused to pray at each place.
The Way encompasses four places associated with the life of Bernadette: the font where she received Baptism; the 'Cachot,' the house where her family lived; the Grotto of Massabielle, site of the apparitions of the Virgin and the heart of the Marian shrine; and the chapel in which she received First Communion. As the Pope arrived at the grotto, a child gave him a glass of water from the spring. The Holy Father then lit a candle and paused a moment to pray in silence before reading the prayer for this stage of the Jubilee Way.
After having dinner at St. Joseph’s Hermitage nearby, Benedict XVI appeared at the lower terrace of the basilica and watched the closing stages of the torchlight procession from the Grotto of the Apparitions to the basilica.