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For millions of pilgrims, a visit to Lourdes to take its miraculous healing waters is an intensely spiritual experience. Since Bernadette Soubirous witnessed the first of 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary almost 150 years ago, the shrine has become a place of quiet contemplation and religious devotion. Hail Mary or Bloody Mary? Lourdes is home to tacky gift shops and numerous bars and clubs But now the town's peace is being shattered by thousands of British tourists whose behaviour has become so bad that officials have brought in riot police. The decision to deploy officers from the notorious...

Saint Bernadette of Lourdes A Sermon by Msgr. Ronald A. Knox, preached February, 1934. ABOUT three thousand years ago, a man stood, thrilled with religious awe, on the slopes of Mount Sinai 'in Arabia. He was a shepherd, feeding on those barren pastures the flocks of his father-in-law; his attention had been aroused, at a distance, by the unwanted sight of a fire in the desert scrub. And now that he had drawn nearer, he saw that this was not merely something beyond the ordinary, but something beyond nature itself; the bush before which he stood burned continually, but was not...