Religion: Hospital for Souls

Down the Rue de la Grotte one morning last week marched eight little boys, hand in hand, wide-eyed and solemn. They were leading the greatest procession ever held at Lourdes, one of Christendom's most famed places of pilgrimage.

Behind them came a hundred rows of other children, followed by a vast crowd of men and women. Many had walked that morning through mountain wind and pelting rain as a special act of devotion to the Virgin Mary on the 100th anniversary of her apparition to little Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto at Lourdes. By 10 o'clock, some 50,000 people were massed within the encircling wings of the basilica, or jammed shoulder to shoulder on the surrounding hillsides.

For months the citizens of Lourdes have labored to prepare for the record 8,000,000 pilgrims expected in this centenary year. On Rue de la Grotte the four-story Hotel Vatican is crusted with scaffolding as workmen rush completion of two more floors. Most of the 600 other hotels in the city (pop. 16,000) are booked solid from April to November.

To welcome 768 scheduled special trains, Lourdes has repainted its railway station and put up a big neon sign combining the papal coat of arms, the arms of Lourdes, and those of the ancient local ruling house of Bigorre. As the town continues its face-lifting, the sound of church bells is drowned everywhere by the clang and bang of cement mixers and pneumatic drills.

Loyalties & Lozenges. The motive for all this activity is not entirely religious. Lourdes is a city of shops—some 400, most of them crammed with cheap religious souvenirs: bottles for carrying water from the grotto, alarm clocks that tinkle Ave Maria, cellophane bags of throat lozenges made from "Genuine Lourdes Water." The names on the shop fronts are aimed at special loyalties: "The Infant Jesus of Prague," "St. Laurence O'Toole" (proprietors Walsh & Douly). These highly competitive private enterprises have helped the city to an estimated income of 10 billion francs (almost $24 million) a year, a figure that may well triple in 1958.

All commercialism stops at the gate to the grounds surrounding the grotto and basilica. Nothing is sold inside except candles; visitors must dress as they would in church. Under the present Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, Pierre-Marie Théas, the grotto has regained much of its 'original rustic simplicity; he replaced the ornate altar with a simple stone slab, took down the iron grille that used to stretch across the front of the cave, removed all but a few of the hundreds of crutches and orthopedic braces left behind by sufferers who found relief at Lourdes.*

Bishop Théas has also pushed ahead with the construction of a new basilica, big enough to hold 20,000 and almost entirely underground (so expensive has the project proved—an estimated $6,000,000 thus far—that the Vatican sent a bishop coadjutor to take charge of the finances). On a hillside above Lourdes, workmen are hurrying to finish the "City of Help," a dozen simple buildings where 600 poor pilgrims may stay free of charge.