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In Lourdes, you immediately experience what is most important (II)

Monsignor Rémy Berchier, a Swiss priest, has led the spring inter-diocesan pilgrimage from French-speaking Switzerland to Lourdes for the past 25 years. This year was the last time he took a group of pilgrims from May 17-23, 2026.

Here are some reflections from a man who says he has learned to love Mary and to let go, taken from his interview with the Swiss website cath.ch:

"In Lourdes, the sick take center stage, and it’s wonderful. Love and service flourish around them. But over the years, I’ve come to understand something else… Everyone is a pilgrim. The sick person is a pilgrim, the volunteer is a pilgrim, the doctor is a pilgrim—and I am a pilgrim. Of the 1,500 pilgrims we were two weeks ago, there were 145 sick people, 450 volunteers, about ten doctors, 75 choir members, and about a hundred young girls from Le Châtelard Middle School… The more I go on, the more I realize that there’s nothing like word of mouth to invite people to come to Lourdes! As a journalist says in the film My Name Is Bernadette: “Lourdes isn’t something you talk about—it’s something you experience.”

Q. Can we hope that Mary, like a mother, might heal the sick with a simple gesture?

I don’t think so. If my mother had had the power to heal me with a wave of a magic wand when I was sick as a child—like all children—because she herself suffered seeing me that way, in two seconds everything would have been forgotten. I prefer what she actually did: taking care of me, worrying about me, doing everything she could to heal me, loving me. That’s what I experience, first and foremost, with Mary. Not a miracle on demand, but a mother who walks beside me, who takes care of me. And on top of that, there’s this magnificent and profound reality: her Son is God, and she intercedes with Him on my behalf.

Q. What do you say to those who come to Lourdes hoping for a physical healing?

There have been 72 recognized miracles in 168 years, out of thousands of requests for miracle recognition. One might ask: “Isn’t that a sign that healing can also happen elsewhere?” But for me, the miracles of Lourdes are miracles of faith. On a path to the right of the grotto—which is now closed—there used to be a statue of a blind Italian pilgrim. He had come seeking healing, but he left without regaining his sight. And he had a statue carved of himself, kneeling on one knee, blindfolded, a cane in his hand, with this inscription: “I came to Lourdes to regain my sight; I did not regain it, but I regained my faith.” That is the miracle.

In Lourdes, you immediately experience what is most important (I)

Monsignor Rémy Berchier, a Swiss citizen, has led the spring interdiocesan pilgrimage from French-speaking Switzerland to Lourdes for the past 25 years. For the last time, he led a group of pilgrims from May 17-23, 2026.

Here are some reflections from a man who says he has learned to love Mary and to let go, taken from his interview with the Swiss website cath.ch:

Q: Has your perspective changed over the past 25 years?

Mons. Berchier: Tremendously. I have learned to love Mary, to understand her better, and to place her more firmly within the history of salvation. We come to Jesus through Mary. And I have immense trust in her. The chaplains at the Shrine have always helped us understand Mary’s message to Bernadette in Lourdes from a biblical perspective.

When I hear the words “penance, penance, pray for sinners!” spoken by the Lady during the eighth apparition on February 24, 1858, I understand them in terms of “reconciliation, forgiveness, and an inner journey.” It took me time to read, meditate, and grow inwardly to truly live out these powerful words and all the others. When you discover that, during the first apparition on February 11, 1858, Bernadette was unable to make the sign of the cross and that it was Mary who made it with her, you understand… Mary comes to remind us of our baptism, this gift from God and this life-changing commitment.

What memories do you have of your very first visit to Lourdes?

I went there as a young man, on the July pilgrimage. It was an aunt from Geneva who signed me up. It made a big impression on me. But I also had some prejudices. I was bothered by the commercial aspect—all those shops you had to walk through to reach the sanctuary. Back then, the sanctuary wasn’t as well laid out. There weren’t those beautiful tree-lined areas or that silence in front of the grotto and behind the Gave River. Besides, I was skeptical, believing that in Lourdes they placed too much emphasis on the Virgin Mary, as if they were deifying her. I needed to discover her, to get to know her better! While always keeping Jesus at the center, at the heart of the faith, I came to understand more fully how Mary leads us to her Son—and also, and above all, to Lourdes!

How did you move from those preconceptions to a deep devotion to Mary?

During our seminary training, the pilgrimage offered two spots to two seminarians to experience Lourdes as hospitality directors. They picked me. And on the very first morning, a man woke me up at 5 a.m. His wife had just died by his side. That’s how I quickly entered into the reality of a pilgrimage. That’s when my misconceptions started to fall away. In Lourdes, you get straight to the heart of the matter. Life, death, and the love that opens up in the hearts of the most vulnerable.

St. John Vianney, the Apostle of Trust in Mary

Father Jacques Pagnoux (1) published The Apostle of Trust in Mary for the 100th anniversary of the death of Saint John Vianney, the Curé of Ars. He wrote in the introduction to his book in 1959:

“Among the aspects of John Vianney’s extraordinary holiness that are worthy of imitation, one is particularly important: his Marian devotion. He left us the example of his life as a priest and parish priest, marked throughout by Marian feast days, in which Mary’s maternal influence over the soul of this saint and his total consecration of himself and his work to her are affirmed and shine forth. Would it be an exaggeration to see in this consecration the key to his personal holiness and his apostolic fruitfulness?”

As if to confirm this thesis, Bishop Suenens, then auxiliary bishop of Mechelen, in his endorsement of this book, congratulated the author with these words:

“In your beautiful book, you have highlighted a lesser-known aspect of the incomparable fisher of men that was the Curé of Ars: his lived union with Mary. Saint John Vianney lived—without expressing it in scholarly terms—this mediation of Mary that opens the soul to the breath of the Spirit. He instinctively followed the royal road, the one that leads surely and quickly to the goal, that is, to the full flowering of the life of Christ in souls... With a single movement of enthusiasm, he turned towards the Mother and the Son; he went to the Son through the Mother”.

www.laportelatine.org

Father Jacques Pagnoux served as Father of the Foyer de Charité in Dakar, Senegal, for many years.

Protected from the Atomic Bomb by the Rosary

In 1945, to secure victory and ensure the end of the war, the United States decided to use the atomic bomb—which it had just developed—for the first time in history. As we all know, two bombs were dropped: one on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki, two Japanese cities.

In Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped and exploded 555 meters above the ground. With the temperature on the ground reaching 3,000 degrees Celsius, every human being within a 1,200-meter radius perished and every building was destroyed; beyond that radius, radiation quickly caused the deaths of thousands more people.

However, 100 meters from the point of explosion stood a convent of German Jesuits, who were praying the rosary at the time. They emerged unscathed from the explosion, unaffected by radiation, and the convent remained standing and intact. No explanation could be found for this miracle.

The miracle was repeated on August 9, 1945, in Nagasaki, which was struck that day by a second American atomic bomb. The Franciscan friars of Father Maximilian Kolbe were praying the Rosary at the time. They all survived in the same way, amidst unspeakable carnage. 

Thus was confirmed the Blessed Virgin’s promise to Alain de la Roche: “Whoever trusts in me through the Rosary will not perish.” 

www.chapelet.net