Over the next two months relics of St Bernadette of Lourdes will be taken on pilgrimage – for the first time – to each of the 26 Catholic dioceses on the island of Ireland.
Catholics believe that in 1858 Bernadette Soubirous, then 14, saw the Virgin Mary 18 times between February and July at the grotto in Lourdes, France. The apparitions were authenticated by the church in 1866 before Soubirous died of tuberculosis in 1879, aged 35. She was canonised in 1933.
As many as 70 cures there have since been described by the Lourdes Medical Bureau as “inexplicable”.
On Tuesday, September 3rd, St Bernadette’s relics, mainly bone fragments in a reliquary, will be given to Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin, currently leading the diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes. He will bring the relics to Knock airport on Wednesday, from where the reliquary will be taken to the Cathedral of Our Lady and St Nicholas in Galway.
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The pilgrimage will continue from there across the island throughout September and October, until a farewell ceremony at the Church of the Risen Christ, at Kiltoom, Co Roscommon, on November 5th.
In the Catholic tradition, relics are described as a tangible reminder of the real, living person that was a saint and are venerated by the devout as objects which were very close to a person now also believed to be close to God.
Also visiting Ireland are the relics of the Catholic Church’s newest saint, Carlos Acutis. A fragment of the membrane that surrounded the heart of Acutis, who is expected to be canonised in Rome next month, will arrive at St Patrick’s Parish, Corduff, in west Dublin, on September 10th.
Declared blessed in 2020, Acutis died of leukaemia in 2006 aged 15.
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