**3. Lourdes: The Invention of Place, Routes, and Rituals**

Lourdes is a small town in the foothills of the Pyrenees near the French border with Spain. Its fortunes were transformed in the aftermath of visions of Mary, the mother of Jesus, experienced by Bernadette Soubirous, a young shepherdess, at a grotto outside the town during 1858 and subsequent claims of miraculous healing associated partly with a spring that she uncovered during her séances. The Roman Catholic Church quickly moved to carve out a sanctuary around the grotto where three churches were built on the cliff overlooking the grotto and a large esplanade was laid out for the daily performance of collective rituals. The spring was channelled into private baths for those wishing to immerse themselves in 'Lourdes water', whereas others could take away the water by accessing the taps constructed along a wall near the grotto and the baths (Sorrel 2016).

A new pilgrimage town grew up between the old town and the sanctuary, and a new route was provided through the building of a railway loop connecting Lourdes to the expanding national and European railway network. In 1871—only thirteen years after Bernadette's visions—the first international pilgrimage group arrived from Belgium and soon afterwards the first Irish pilgrimage arrived having crossed by boat to England, by railway to Dover, ferry to Calais, and then down to the margins of France. The development of a national road network enabled growing numbers of people to arrive by car or coach, and after the Second World War, the volume of arrivals massively increased, aided by the expansion of international air transport. Between 1949 and 2008, the numbers of people arriving, mostly during the pilgrimage season between May and October, rose from approximately 2,500,000 to around 9,000,000. The sanctuary provided a variety of ritual events to cater for this mass of visitors that ranged from celebrations performed inside the three basilicas, at the grotto, and, more recently, across the river at an altar installed on the meadow to the regular afternoon Eucharistic or Blessed Sacrament procession, popularly known as the Blessing of the Sick ceremony, and the evening Torchlight Procession, both of which used the esplanade.

Although the last two celebrations have caught the eye of many observers (see Zola 1995; Harris 1999; Kaufman 2005), pilgrimage groups also performed rituals on the way both to and from the shrine. During the train journeys groups organised by parishes, dioceses, Catholic orders, and national institutions prayers were intoned while the Lourdes Hymn was joyfully sung as the main basilica standing high on the cliff overlooking the grotto came into view. Those who came by coach sometimes had the opportunity to stop at other famous shrines on the way, such as Nevers, where Bernadette's body is on display (see Dahlberg 1991), Lisieux or Chartres. For the increasing number of people arriving by plane there were very few opportunities for ritual performance, but once everyone had disembarked and were seated in the coaches taking them from the airport to the town, there were also opportunities for the recitation of prayers and perhaps a verse of the Lourdes Hymn.
