{"id":484,"date":"2008-02-12T17:51:36","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T17:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv.php"},"modified":"2008-02-12T17:51:36","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T17:51:36","slug":"lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv","title":{"rendered":"Lourdes Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Virgin Mary Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; February 11, 2008 <\/strong><br \/>\nParis (dpa) &#8211; More than 50,000 Catholic pilgrims took part in a Mass on Monday at the Catholic shrine in the southern French city of Lourdes to celebrated the 150th anniversary of the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous.<br \/>\nThe Mass was read jointly by some 30 bishops and 800 priests in several languages, including German, Polish and English. The rest of Monday was to be devoted to prayer.<br \/>\nOn February 11, 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette at the entrance of a grotto near Lourdes. This was the first of 18 apparitions of Mary to the young girl.<br \/>\nAsked to describe her, Bernadette said, &#8220;She has the appearance of a young girl of 16 or 17. She is dressed in a white robe, girdled at the waist with a blue ribbon which flows down all along Her robe.<br \/>\n&#8220;She wears upon Her head a veil which is also white. This veil gives just a glimpse of Her hair and then falls down at the back below Her waist.&#8221;<br \/>\nAs a result of the visions, Lourdes has become one of the most popular pilgrimage destinations in the world, with an average of 5 million visitors a year, many of them coming in the hopes of being cured of a variety of ailments.<br \/>\nAlthough it has a population of only about 15,000, Lourdes contains the second-largest number of hotels of any French city, behind only Paris.<br \/>\nSome 8 million visitors are expected to stream into Lourdes this year to take part in the celebrations commemorating the anniversary of Saint Bernadette&#8217;s visions.<br \/>\nPope Benedict XVI is expected to travel to Lourdes later in the year, probably in September.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2008 dpa Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; February 11, 2008 Paris (dpa) &#8211; More than 50,000 Catholic pilgrims took part in a Mass on Monday at the Catholic shrine in the southern French city of Lourdes to celebrated the 150th anniversary of the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous. The Mass&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lourdes Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Virgin Mary Vision<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lourdes Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Virgin Mary Vision\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; February 11, 2008 Paris (dpa) &#8211; More than 50,000 Catholic pilgrims took part in a Mass on Monday at the Catholic shrine in the southern French city of Lourdes to celebrated the 150th anniversary of the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous. The Mass&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-12T17:51:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Lourdes Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Virgin Mary Vision","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Lourdes Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Virgin Mary Vision","og_description":"Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) &#8211; February 11, 2008 Paris (dpa) &#8211; More than 50,000 Catholic pilgrims took part in a Mass on Monday at the Catholic shrine in the southern French city of Lourdes to celebrated the 150th anniversary of the appearance of the Virgin Mary to a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous. The Mass&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2008-02-12T17:51:36+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv","name":"Lourdes Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Virgin Mary Vision","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-02-12T17:51:36+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-12T17:51:36+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2008\/02\/lourdes-celebrates-150th-anniv#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lourdes Celebrates 150th Anniversary of Virgin Mary Vision"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}