Relics of St Bernadette of Lourdes on display in Portlaoise

THE RELICS of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes are currently visiting SS Peter and Paul’s church in Portlaoise today (Tuesday 8 October) as part of a nationwide visit of all dioceses in the country, having never before been in Ireland.

Everyone is welcome to visit the relics of Saint Bernadette throughout the day and to attend the special history-making services in the church which will continue until 9pm tonight.

The Laois visit of The Pilgrimage of St Bernadette’s Relics, Ireland 2024 began at 7am this morning with a welcoming ceremony and a decade of the rosary conducted by Father Eric. This was followed by a special mass. A rosary recital ceremony took place at 9.30am, followed by a second mass at 10am.

The rest of the day includes a ritual with water from the Lourdes Grotto at 12 noon, confessions from 4.30pm until 6.30pm, a rosary recital at 6.30pm and mass with the anointing of the sick at 7pm. The closing ceremony will take place at 9pm and following this, the holy relics will be brought to St Mary’s Church in Castleblaney in the diocese of Clogher.

Monsignor John Byrne commented for the Laois nationalist on the huge significance of this visit. He said: “We are privileged to welcome the relics of Saint Bernadette which are visiting every diocese in Ireland, and we’re privileged to have been selected as a church where she is going to spend the day here in the diocese of Kildare and Leighlin.

“There is a huge association with Lourdes and our parish. This year was the 50th anniversary of the first parish pilgrimage to Lourdes which took place in 1974. A huge number of people have been associated with that pilgrimage and would have organised it, and many of them indeed are gone to their eternal reward. “Thousands of Portlaoise people have been to Lourdes on that parish pilgrimage and other pilgrimages associated with Portlaoise over the years. So, with that great association with Lourdes, it is very appropriate I think that we would be hosting the relics of Saint Bernadette. It's like bringing a little bit of Lourdes to our own parish.

“One of the great features of Lourdes is that the only VIPs in Lourdes are the sick and the disabled. Indeed I hope that we bring a blessing on many sick people and many people who are struggling in one way or another, and they will find that Bernadette will intercede for us all and bring us some of that peace and joy that is associated with the shrine at Lourdes.

"I’m sure that many thousands of people will pass through our church and please God they will be enriched by coming to see and to pray at the relics of Bernadette.” At the age of 14, between February 11 and July 16 in 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous 18 times in the Massabielle Grotto in Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains of southern France, where she told Bernadette ‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’ Saint Bernadette died from chronic asthma and tuberculosis of the lungs and bones on 16 April 1879, and she was canonised on 8 December 1933. Her last words were: “Blessed Mary, Mother of God, pray for me. A poor sinner, a poor sinner.”