This year the online Lourdes Pilgrimage, ‘Lourdes: Bringing us together’ takes place from Friday 17 September – Tuesday 21 September 2021. Even though we can not get to Lourdes in person this year, we can join together virtually for our pilgrimage events, with most events broadcast from the “Irish Lourdes” the Oblate Grotto in Inchicore, Dublin.
The Oblate pilgrimage has been travelling to Lourdes every year since 1883 – except for during the war years and now Covid – and is the longest-running English-speaking pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Lourdes – a place of healing, a place of hope and a place of peace. Join with us as Lourdes brings us together from wherever we are.
There will be contributions and interactive events with members of our Oblate pilgrimage family from the different areas of the Anglo-Irish Province – Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and the island of Jersey, and we invite you to participate from your home wherever you are. We hope you will have a prayerful, enjoyable, and life-giving pilgrimage with us online this year.
While the time difference for us in Australia is a little more difficult to view the live events – the sessions are being broadcast via YouTube and we can access them at a time that is convenient for us. By clicking here to go to The Oblates YouTube Channel for the Anglo-Irish Province you can view the videos of the virtual pilgrimage. If you hit the red subscribe button you will get notifications when the next video has gone live – especially handy if you happen to be up and functioning at the time! You can also view the sessions via their FaceBook page https://www.facebook.com/theoblates
For more information, including a breakdown of the timetable – you can head to this website https://oblates.ie/how-to-participate-in-the-virtual-lourdes-pilgrimage-2021/ and if you need help with figuring out the timezone differences – this is a handy time zone converter.
For a first-hand account of the influence the pilgrimage has had, check out Ronan below talking about his experiences.
