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LOURDES-PREVIEW Jul-30-2004 (960 words) With photo posted July 19. xxxi
Bishop says pope to visit Lourdes to praise God, not seek healing
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope John Paul II will make an Aug. 14-15 pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, not to seek physical healing but to praise God for his great gifts, including the gift of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said the papal trip organizer.
"Lourdes is not just a place to seek healing, it is a place where people demonstrate their faith in God and their devotion to Mary," said Bishop Renato Boccardo, the trip organizer and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications.
The 84-year-old Pope John Paul has billed his trip to the shrine in the French Pyrenees as part of his commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the solemn proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
"To look at this pilgrimage as the trip of a sick person among the sick is totally shortsighted," Bishop Boccardo told Catholic News Service July 27.
"The Holy Father is not going to Lourdes because he is sick," he said. "He is going because he is the pope, and he will carry the whole church with him to offer adoration to Mary and to God."
On Dec. 8, 1854, Pope Pius IX formally proclaimed that with "a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God," the Blessed Virgin Mary was "preserved free from all stain of original sin" from the moment of her conception.
Less than four years later, a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous claimed she had seen the Blessed Virgin Mary 18 times in a grotto near Lourdes. When Bernadette asked her name, Mary replied, "I am the Immaculate Conception."
In 1862, the local bishop officially recognized the apparitions seen by Bernadette between February and July of 1858.
Bishop Boccardo said the dogma of the Immaculate Conception "says to the world that innocence is possible, especially for Mary, but also for us. Baptism in Jesus gives us back the innocence present at the beginning of creation."
The bishop said the pope is traveling to Lourdes to remind people of God's grace and God's initiatives throughout human history to bring people back to himself. Obviously, a key part of God's outreach to sinful human beings was sending his son, born of a virgin who was without sin.
In the Lourdes apparitions, Mary called for prayer and penance, and she told Bernadette to drink the water of small spring in the grotto. Five days later, a friend of Bernadette's bathed her injured arm in the spring and was healed.
The pope, like St. Bernadette 146 years earlier, will drink water from the Lourdes spring upon his arrival at the grotto Aug. 14, Bishop Boccardo said.
"The water," the bishop said, "is a sign of reconciliation and of baptism."
However, Bishop Boccardo said that Pope John Paul will not bathe in the waters of the spring, which is a ritual of faith and hope carried out by more than 300,000 ailing people each year.
"I can exclude that the pope is going to ask for healing" while at Lourdes, the bishop said. "Rather, he will praise God for his great works, one of which was Mary."
"The Holy Father has said more than once that it is beautiful to spend yourself completely for the Gospel," he said. "He sees his physical condition as part of his ministry. He is confident that his suffering has a mysterious fruitfulness for the universal church."
Within a year of the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes, the local bishop had appointed a physician to examine claims of miracles connected to the waters of the grotto and to the prayers recited there.
The International Medical Committee of Lourdes has taken over the investigatory task, following a detailed set of criteria, including a requirement that a physical healing endure for at least 10 years before the committee considers issuing a statement that it is "medically inexplicable."
According to the shrine's official Lourdes Magazine, 66 healings have been recognized as miraculous since the time of the apparitions.
Bishop Boccardo said people should remember that the sick who go to Lourdes "are not simply 'the sick.' They are mothers and fathers, religious, sons and daughters. Their identity is not being sick, even if physically they are marked by illness."
In the same way, he said, Pope John Paul "is the pope, even if he does not walk."
The pope's difficulty in walking is the main reason why he will not stay at the local bishop's residence, which is "full of stairs," but rather in the Accueil Notre Dame guesthouse, Bishop Boccardo said.
The guesthouse, built for pilgrims needing special care, has 900 beds in 290 rooms; each bed has a call button and each room is equipped with oxygen. Medical treatment rooms and a nurses' station are found on each floor.
"We will take just a small part of the residence, just one floor of one wing for the Holy Father," Bishop Boccardo said. "We will not displace the sick."
"The pope is not staying at the guesthouse because it is almost a hospital, but because it is completely accessible for someone who has difficulty walking," he said.
Leading the recitation of the rosary Aug. 14, watching a torchlight procession that night and celebrating Mass on the Aug. 15 feast of Mary's assumption into heaven, Pope John Paul will be surrounded by the sick, who will have priority seating, Bishop Boccardo said.
Lourdes, he said, "is a place of joy and hope. Certainly the first superficial impact is of the suffering one sees. But if you look just a bit deeper, you see amazing hope -- not just for healing -- but for the grace of God."
When the weak and frail always come first, as at Lourdes, he said, "it says to the world, 'The Lord is our strength.'"
END
Copyright (c) 2004 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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