Free Republic

Recalling the apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes and the World Day of the Sick, which this year is being celebrated in Seoul, Benedict XVI exhorted health workers and relatives of sick people to offer “human support” and “spiritual accompaniment”, especially those who are terminally ill.  Vatican City (AsiaNews) – On the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, now also the World Day of the Sick, the pope did not stop at talking about miracles and healing. Thanking health workers and relatives of sick people, he called for the “development of palliative care that offers holistic support”, giving “terminally ill...

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...

WHEN is a miracle not a miracle? Lourdes, the French town and religious resort whose spring water is believed by many people to possess healing properties, is considering a change in the rules to allow more cures to be put down to divine intervention, writes Matthew Campbell. The Catholic Church has recognised only a few dozen miracle healings since Lourdes began attracting pilgrims after the Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to a 14-year-old shepherdess called Bernadette in 1858. Worryingly, however, the number of cures has been declining, even as the number of pilgrims has risen. In its infancy,...