LOURDES PILGRIMAGE GOES ONLINE

THE first ever virtual pilgrimage to Lourdes will be run by the Archdiocese of Dublin next week.

Due to travel restrictions, for just the second time in over half a century, there will be no Dublin Diocesan pilgrimage to Lourdes this year. Last September, over 2,000 people took part.

The organisers said that ‘it was with great sadness’ that they were forced to cancel plans for 2020.

This year those who lost their lives since the pandemic began, the bereaved, those who are ill and frontline workers will be among those remembered in the virtual pilgrimage.

Since 1949, when it was led by Archbishop

John Charles McQuaid, thousands of Irish people have accompanied sick pilgrims to the French Marian Shrine every September.

The only other time the pilgrimage from the capital did not proceed was in 1953 when Dublin pilgrims, who had made their way from Westland Row in the city centre to Dún Laoghaire, Holyhead, Dover, Calais and Paris, were then forced to turn around and make the lengthy journey home again due to a train strike in the French capital.

Next Tuesday Archbishop Diarmuid Martin will begin the first virtual Lourdes pilgrimage with an opening Mass in St Bernadette’s

Church, Clogher Road, Crumlin. The pilgrimage will take place over webcam in six different churches in the Diocese over five days.

As numbers are restricted in each church, the wider public are invited to join live online.

There will be an Irish Sign Language interpreter at all venues through the virtual journey for members of the deaf community.

Pilgrimage director Fr Martin Noone said they are delighted to be able to connect directly with Lourdes on the virtual pilgrimage next Saturday when, while Mass is taking place here, a Dublin pilgrimage candle will be left at the Chapel of Light near the Lourdes Grotto.