SVP national pilgrimage returning to Walsingham
May 18, 2022
St Edmund’s Abbey ecumenical 1000-year celebration
May 19, 2022
The relics of St Bernadette, whose visions of Our Lady are closely associated with the French shrine at Lourdes, will be visiting the Diocese of East Anglia later this year.
St Bernadette was born in Lourdes in 1844, the eldest of nine children, into a humble family which had fallen into poverty. She was frail and received the last rites three times during her childhood.
In 1858, when she was 14, she was out with her sister and a friend gathering firewood when she heard the sound of a rushing wind and received what the Church recognises as her first vision of Our Lady.
In the vision Bernadette was asked to tell the people to repent of their sins, and to tell the priests to build a chapel and invite the people to come and to pray.
The relics, which include a section of rib and pieces of hair, will be at St John’s Cathedral in Norwich from 11:30 am on Thursday October 13 until 9am on Saturday October 15 and then at Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge from 12 noon on Saturday October 15 until 9am on Sunday October 16.
Lourdes is especially connected with healing, and those in need of healing are invited to visit the relics while they are in East Anglia.
Pictured above is St Bernadette of Lourdes.
