It was absolutely bucketing rain in Lourdes last Monday morning. A Bank Holiday at home in Ireland, but in the village of St Bernadette, just another extraordinary day.

I suppose for anyone that’s never been, it’s difficult to understand or even contemplate what the ‘experience’ is all about.

I’ve been to Rome and Lanzarote a few times, and to Fuengirola in Spain, also and Killarney and San Marino. Writing about these places has never proved problematic to me but Lourdes - it is so, so difficult to describe and summarize.

The more often I come, you’d think ’twould be easier, but no!

Look. I freely admit I’m ‘hooked’ on it – no apologies to anyone, and it’s a great addiction to have!

We arrived here - I mean the Cloyne Diocesan Pilgrimage - last Friday in blazing heat. That afternoon as I walked down Rue de Grotte the temperature reached 36C - I thought my shoes would melt.

Since I started to travel to Lourdes annually in 2007, I’ve seen huge ‘peaks and troughs’. For the 150th anniversary year of 2008, the crowds were massive and held up well for most of a decade, but then the scourge of covid reared its awful head and the whole world was changed, utterly changed. Pilgrimages to holy places like Lourdes went by the wayside.

It’s only with the last two years that some degree of normality has returned. We saw a noticeable change this year with a surge in numbers obvious everywhere. It isn’t back to what it was, but going in the right direction.

Organised Lourdes pilgrimages usually have a set ‘programme’ of events lined up - Opening Mass, Confession Service, Passage through the actual Grotto, Torchlight and Blessed Sacrament processions, Statins of the Cross and a Healing Mass.

For those not familiar with travelling to the village near the Pyrenees in the south of France, that list might seem like a religious overload. Then, Lourdes is all about religion - more especially, I think, about Christianity, and lads, when Christianity is practised to its fullest, there’s nothing better than it in the world - and that’s pure........

© Evening Echo