Abstract
Millions of pilgrims visit Lourdes each year, often seeking revitalisation rather than miraculous cures. We sought to understand the phenomenon of transcendent experiences. We spoke with 67 pilgrims including assisted pilgrims, young volunteers and medical staff. About two in five reported a transcendent experience: some felt they had communicated or had close contact with a divine presence, while others reported a powerful experience of something intangible and otherworldly. Transcendent experiences are an important feature of pilgrimage to Lourdes and the place offers the faithful a means of connecting with the divine, with nature and with the self.
Highlights
Lourdes is a Catholic pilgrimage site in South West France known as a sanctuary for healing
Given that few pilgrims experience miraculous healing and many may come for a host of other reasons, the purpose of our research was to explore whether pilgrims visiting Lourdes had transcendent experiences and to examine their nature
Visiting Lourdes can have a powerful effect on a pilgrim and may include an “out of the ordinary” transcendent experience, involving a sense of relationship with the divine, or experiences of something otherworldly and intangible
Summary
Lourdes is a Catholic pilgrimage site in South West France known as a sanctuary for healing. Soubirous received several instructions, including exhortations that people should come in procession to the grotto, build a chapel there, and drink and bathe in the. People began to report miraculous cures as a result of these practices, and there have been thousands of claims of healing in the subsequent years. These are submitted to Lourdes’ own Medical Bureau for investigation: 70 “unexplained healings” have been confirmed as miraculous, out of more than 7000 candidate cases (Lourdes Sanctuary, n.d.). Research about Lourdes tends to explore broader therapeutic effects rather than miraculous cures (Harris, 2013; Higgins & Hamilton, 2019; Perriam, 2015; Warfield et al, 2014)
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