(Lourdes) Des milliers de fidèles se sont pressés vendredi au sanctuaire de Lourdes, dans le sud de la France, impatients de passer la main sur la paroi de la grotte, fermée au public pendant près de deux ans, en raison de la crise sanitaire.
Publié à 14h50
Le choix du 11 février est symbolique, puisqu’il s’agit du jour où pour la première fois, en 1858, la Vierge Marie est apparue à Bernadette Soubirous, selon la tradition catholique.
« En ce jour anniversaire, […]pilgrims can once again go inside the cave to make one of the gestures so important to them: to touch this rock as a sign of trust in the Virgin Mary, to deposit there their joys, their sorrows, their anxieties”, told AFP Olivier Ribadeau Dumas, rector of the sanctuary.
A mass on this occasion brought together nearly 4,000 people.
“We have never had so many people for a mass for two years”, rejoiced the rector.
The closure of the cave has weighed heavily on the attendance of the second hotel city in France, after Paris, which has 14,000 inhabitants and is 90% dependent on tourism.
Before the pandemic, the Marian city welcomed some 3.5 million visitors a year, including many sick people in search of miraculous healing.
The lifting of the majority of health restrictions at the sanctuary – even if the mask is still relevant – is the “sign that this time that we have lived through is almost completely behind us and that pilgrims can complete their pilgrimage in complete safety and serenity. here,” said Bishop Ribadeau Dumas.
Moved to tears, Thérèse Scalino, 88, said she was “upset” to be in front of the cave.
“I prayed so much for two months to the Blessed Virgin so that I could come here. I was answered, it’s an immense joy, ”added the octogenarian in a wheelchair, from Nice.
Marc Martineau, 53, made the trip from Ventimiglia in Italy to enjoy the opening of the cave with his companion and “to get closer to this feeling of fullness” that it provides.
A little further on, Firas Abboud, a 41-year-old Lebanese, understands that “people come to seek physical contact” with the cave, but for him, “the real cave is in our heart”.