The evening sky in Lourdes, France filled with song as thousands of pilgrims lifted candles into the air, singing “ave, ave, ave Maria.” Among them walked Sacred Heart Greenwich alumnae, educators, and students, who took part in the annual Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage July 12 to 22. The pilgrims from King Street included seniors Caroline Hartch, Avery Kim, Francesca Marangi, Isabella Nardis, Camila Oliva, and Kelsey Wilkens, alumnae Molly Kriskey ’23 and Ms. Sarah McDonald ’14, and Mrs. Maureen Considine, Director of Upper School Campus Ministry and Sacristan. Caroline, Kelsey, and Ms. McDonald reflected on their experiences in Lourdes.
The town of Lourdes is nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains and borders the shores of the Gave de Pau river. It has been a pilgrimage site for Catholics since 1858, when a young shepherd girl, Saint Bernadette Soubirous, witnessed 18 apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a rocky grotto. Mary directed the child to dig in the ground to reveal a fresh spring of water, which believers link with miraculous healings. After years of scrutiny from religious officials, these apparitions received recognition from the Catholic Church in 1862, according to hospitalite-nd-lourdes.com. Ever since, pilgrims have flocked to Lourdes to seek physical and spiritual restoration.
The Ampleforth Pilgrimage began in the 1950s under the guidance of monks from Ampleforth Abbey, a Benedictine monastery in North Yorkshire, England. Sacred Heart has partnered closely with the Ampleforth Pilgrimage for over 40 years. Each summer, this Pilgrimage community, one of countless pilgrim groups, unites in Lourdes to pray, reflect, and serve sick, elderly, or disabled Assisted Pilgrims (APs).
This July, Sacred Heart girls participated in long-standing Lourdes traditions. They carried candles in the nightly Torchlight Procession, accompanied APs to the daily Blessed Sacrament Procession, and washed in the Geste de L’eau Baths. Caroline reflected on her participation in Sunday’s International Mass in the Basilica of Saint Pius X.
“I chose to go on the Lourdes pilgrimage to encounter the global nature of the Catholic Church,” Caroline said. “I feel this is best represented in the International Sunday Mass, which is a Mass attended by thousands of practitioners each week held in the Lourdes Domain. Here, Mass is given in an array of different languages to an international audience. I came to Lourdes to encounter this precise experience.”
In addition to these large-scale displays of cultural diversity, the Ampleforth Pilgrimage emphasizes the significance of small moments in Lourdes. Sacred Heart students worked from dawn to dark in the Accueil Saint-Frai to serve the APs by brewing tea, cleaning, and providing personal care. Kelsey detailed how these one-on-one moments strengthened the bonds between seemingly dissimilar Pilgrimage members.
“One day, while I was preparing to accompany an Assisted Pilgrim named Emel, who struggled with speech, to Mass, I was standing in her room when all of a sudden, she took my arm and brought me over to look at the artwork she had made the day before,” Kelsey said. “When I expressed my pride in her work, the excitement on her face was indescribable, and I was overcome with joy. This experience showed me how our never-wavering support facilitates such a strong understanding of one another, no matter what boundaries we face, which keeps us in touch with our humanity.”
This year, the Ampleforth leaders designed the Pilgrimage with a focus on Our Lady’s directive to St. Bernadette to Build a Church. While Lourdes is home to an abundance of structural basilicas and chapels, it is also home to a human Church that is both globally diverse and meaningfully unified, according to ampleforthlourdes.org. Kelsey offered her perspective on the Ampleforth community in particular.
“The Ampleforth community was the most welcoming and uplifting community to work alongside,” Kelsey said. “I was in a large group of teenagers and adults, and I only knew one person in my group; therefore, I was often socializing with people I did not know. Often from England, these new faces embraced me with open arms and always tried to learn about my character and my life, not only surface curiosities.”
The Sacred Heart community also has deep roots in the Pilgrimage. Generations of students have journeyed to Lourdes during the summer before their senior year. Despite three years of halted participation due to the coronavirus pandemic, Sacred Heart’s presence within the Pilgrimage endured, and this year’s seniors encountered alumnae from King Street, such as Mrs. Adelaide Shafer Barrett ’91 and Ms. Alexandra Dimitri ’16.
Ms. McDonald traveled to Lourdes for the first time during her senior year in 2013, and this July marked her sixth Pilgrimage. She shared that her service work in Lourdes inspired her to intern at two nonprofit organizations and join the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after her graduation from Georgetown University. This experience, in turn, exposed her to the field of education. She now works as an elementary school teacher at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, Florida.
“I really cherished my first Lourdes experience and knew that I wanted to return at least once more,” Ms. McDonald said. “The first time I went, I was praying about college applications, but I have also been there praying before starting college, before my senior year of college with job applications in mind, and, this year, before moving to Miami after finishing graduate school. It is a reminder of how God’s love for us doesn’t change, even as our lives, our worries, and our joys do.”
Ms. McDonald’s connection to the Pilgrimage is familial, too, as her mother, Mrs. Marcie McDonald, Academic Dean for the Classes of 2024 and 2027, chaperoned students’ journeys to Lourdes before Ms. McDonald was born. Now, ten years after her first pilgrimage, Ms. McDonald reflected on what Lourdes means to her.
“I am always struck by Bernadette’s story,” Ms. McDonald said. “When I see the impressive beauty of the basilica and the multitude of people who have come to seek healing, I am struck by how God brought all of this to life through an impoverished, sickly 14-year-old girl. Lourdes gives me the opportunity to reflect on my relationship with God and my relationship with the human family. To me, Lourdes means taking time to reflect and connect and then trying to bring the fruits of that reflection and connection into my everyday life.”
Featured Image by Avery Kim ’24
