Despite the risks, they come to ask for a miracle.

Several thousand faithful are expected this Sunday in Lourdes, the largest French Catholic pilgrimage center, despite a context of epidemic recovery and limited travel abroad.

For the celebrations of the Assumption, the faithful, however less numerous than usual, accompany some 300 sick people in search of miraculous healing who were absent last year.

“We feel protected, we are not afraid.

It is a place of hope for healing.

I came with pain in my hip.

There have been a lot of miracles here, why not us?

», Says Marie-Bernadette Zombré, 44, originally from Bordeaux and used to Lourdes for five years.

"I'm surprised there are so many people"

The cave where, according to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, is closed to the public to avoid contamination.

The pilgrims used to put their hand on the walls, kiss the stone.

“I'm surprised there are so many people.

It's not like the other years, but it's a pleasure to see all these people, ”said Hélène Thurnreiter, 80, for her part.

The octogenarian from Mulhouse dedicates his prayers to “those who left this year with the Covid”.

In 2020, the shrine had to close several weeks for the first time in its history and 85% of pilgrimages had been canceled.

This year the mask is still compulsory in the sanctuary, not the health pass.

Few foreign tourists

Some 9,300 people took part on Saturday evening in the traditional Marian torchlight procession on the esplanade of the sanctuary of Lourdes, where the faithful recited several "Hail Mary" while raising their torches to the sky.

And up to 15,000 pilgrims are expected Sunday at 10 am for the international mass said in several languages, chaired by the Archbishop of Paris, Mgr Michel Aupetit.

He will deliver a message of “fraternity”, the theme of the pilgrimage this year, in the basilica of Saint Pius X, a gigantic underground church 200 meters long and 80 wide, which can accommodate 25,000 people in normal times.

“This theme is particularly important in a damaged, fractured French society, where violence has its share, both physical and verbal.

Fraternity is always a call, it is never a given ”, underlines the rector of the sanctuary of Lourdes, Bishop Olivier Ribadeau Dumas.

Although tourists and devotees are back, with no limited capacity this year, the large contingents of foreigners (around 65% of pilgrims generally) are missing and around 40 hotels remain currently closed in the second hotel town. from France, after Paris, which is 90% dependent on tourism.

1 million visitors compared to the usual 3.5 million

“Most of the hotels opened at the beginning of July.

It was very quiet at start-up, with an occupancy rate of around 10%.

It is very low, ”regrets Hervé Jeanson, president of the club of hoteliers and restaurateurs of Lourdes and owner of a hotel, pointing out, however,“ a great desire to come back to Lourdes ”for the pilgrims.

And this lower influx is felt almost everywhere in the city: in August the sanctuary crossed the one million visitors mark, against around 3.5 million in a normal year.

And in total, the sanctuary, which received up to 30,000 patients per year, plans to accommodate ten times less in 2021.

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Society

Lourdes: Gradual return of pilgrimages, mainly French

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