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Article: MIRACLES AND MASSES Business is booming at the pilgrimage site of Lourdes, with an unprecedented 7 million visitors expected in the coming year. John Lichfield travels to the town and asks what really draws people there: faith or superstition?
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- December 12, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1999 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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RANDOM CANDLE burning is strictly forbidden in Lourdes. Each
candle must be placed in the open air in one of 22 altars which look
like market stalls on wheels. The altars glow day and night, a few
steps from the cave where a 14-year-old peasant girl, Bernadette
Soubirous, saw 18 visions of the Virgin Mary between February and
July 1858.
When I first came across the outdoor candle shelters on a dark
November afternoon, they were glowing like bonfires. A freezing wind
was blowing from the Pyrenees. The hundreds of candles inside the
blackened metal frames had been knocked against one another and fused
into bizarre, inappropriately demonic-looking structures, like
details from a painting by ...