Fire damages world-famous healing shrine of Lourdes

An overnight fire last weekend caused costly damage to part of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, which was already struggling to recover from two years of pandemic

Three candle-lit chapels recently constructed at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France were badly damaged by fire last weekend, causing costly damage at the world’s most famous healing shrine.

“This is another blow to the sanctuary of Lourdes, which did not need this,” tweeted the shrine’s rector Bishop Olivier Ribadeau Dumas.

The overnight blaze that went into the early hours of last Sunday destroyed three of the seven “Chapels of Light” that were added to the Marian shrine in 2018. No one was injured.

The chapels are located on the right bank of the Gave de Pau just across from the famous healing pools and were designed as a place where pilgrims could light candles and pray.

“A large candle, perhaps adorned with a paper, probably caught fire because of the wind and ignited the wooden frame,” said Vincent Neymon, director of the communications and resources department of the sanctuary.

An internal investigation was opened this week, but early indications suggest the fire was an accident.

“We are ruling out any deliberate attack,” Neymon told La Croix.

He based his early assessment on surveillance camera footage and the night rounds by security guards, who said they saw no signs of intrusion.

The main economic resource of the sanctuary threatened

The fire was quickly brought under control and there were no victims, but material damage was considerable.

The three destroyed chapels had been custom-built in 2018 in order to vent smoke and heat and withstand frequent flooding.

The shrine puts the cost of rebuilding them and replacing the destroyed equipment used to transport candles at “at least 1.5 million euros”, out of an annual budget of 30 million.

Above all, the fire hit the sanctuary’s main economic resource, as donations for candles make up nearly 40% of its budget.

The destruction of three of the seven chapels — where a total of 4,000 candles could all be lit at the same time — complicates the shrine’s ongoing efforts to rebound from two difficult years marked by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, which opened just a few years after the Virgin Mary allegedly made a number of appearances in 1858 to a little peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous, closed temporarily for the first time in its history because of the Covid lockdown.

Although it reopened to the public in February 2022, the number of pilgrims remains half of what it was in 2019.

The shrine continues the online donation system it set up during lockdown to all people who could not travel to express their faith and to compensate for the drop in attendance.

Virtual pilgrims simply have to fill out a form and make a payment on the Lourdes website, indicating that they want a candle lit in their name or a rose placed before Our Lady’s statue in the famous grotto on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Four chapels remain open to the public

Four Chapels of Light remain open to the public, under reinforced surveillance. While waiting for the other three to be rebuilt by the end of the year, the sanctuary plans to replace the old burners on its meadow and build a new, temporary structure.

Pilgrims will need to leave the larger candles with those responsible for lighting them at Lourdes. They will light them themselves and burn them later, at times when there are fewer people.

Making it possible for pilgrims to complete their journey by lighting a candle, and thus reproducing the actions of Bernadette Soubirous, is “very important to satisfy people’s piety”, insisted Neymon.

And “we must continue to provide this resource”.