MONSIGNOR JACQUES Perrier, the bishop of Lourdes, often tells Irish visitors that as a percentage of its population, Ireland sends more pilgrims to Lourdes than any other country - more than 50,000 every year, according to Church sources, writes Lara Marlowein Lourdes
Merchants and hoteliers cater to Irish clientele, with shamrock-decked shops and names like the Hôtel d'Irlande.
Irish pilgrims are here in force for Pope Benedict XVI's first visit to the Marian shrine. In the crowded streets and sanctuaries, you constantly see Irish faces and hear Irish voices. Catherine Taffe, one of 1,500 pilgrims from the diocese of Meath, was among a handful of worshippers who received communion from the Pope at a Mass for 200,000 people yesterday.
Some Irish pilgrims booked their trips before they knew about the papal visit. "We think he booked when he heard we were coming," joked Michael Logue, who travelled with 500 parishioners from Clonard Monastery in Belfast. They're staying at the Paradise Hotel for a week.
"When you get beyond the glitz of all the shops selling candles and plastic statuettes, when you go to the grotto (where the Virgin is said to have appeared 18 times to Saint Bernadette), you do draw strength out of it," Mr Logue said.
This is the fourth trip for the Logues, who are both retired schoolteachers. They believe his kidney transplant 10 years ago was something close to a miracle. "Michael was on dialysis for nine years," Madeleine Logue explains, her eyes tearing up. "He had a rare kidney tissue, and they couldn't find a donor. Finally his sister said she would give him a kidney, but she died of bowel cancer before a transplant was possible. She bought him a ticket for Lourdes. Two years later, on February 11th, the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, he got his new kidney."
Nora Harris (78) left Dublin for London when she was 16. She had 10 children in England, where she worked in catering. And she travelled from Twickenham with her daughter Maria because she adores Pope Benedict XVI. "He is a great pope, as great as John Paul II," Mrs Harris said.
Sinead Gleeson (30), a barrister from Wexford, has spent her summer holiday helping English-speaking media. Some 2,500 journalists were accredited for the papal visit. She's living in a cold, damp tent with four women, but says she wouldn't have missed it.
"I just wanted to come and experience the place," she says. "It's an opportunity to reflect about my life; in Ireland, I'm too busy. I'd get a lot more out of this than a holiday in Tenerife."
Ms Gleeson says she has been most impressed by the priority given to the sick here. "In Ireland, one goes about one's business aware that there are sick and old people, but here, they're just in your face; you realise people really need care."
Like Ms Gleeson, Sr Paula Peter Coleman (67) from Drumcondra is a volunteer who has devoted her summer holiday to helping out for the papal visit, making beds and cleaning in the Cité Saint-Pierre, a hostel for pilgrims too poor to stay in hotels.
"I was 16 when I first came here with the girl guides," says Sr Paula. She became a nun three years later, and did not return until her mid-30s. "Lourdes is special because it's a shrine for the sick," she continued. "I was always mesmerised by it."
Though she never saw a miracle, Sr Paula believed the Irishwoman who told her she'd been blind and had her sight restored in Lourdes. For 18 years, between 1981 and 1999, Sr Paula brought 30 pilgrims from Dublin, often delinquent youths, to Lourdes each year.
"Every time I left, I'd go to the statue of the Virgin (on the esplanade in front of the sanctuaries) and say, 'Bring me back soon'."