De La Mennais Brothers: Making Jesus Christ better known and loved by young people

The Basilica steps and the new mosaics commissioned for the Jubilee year, illustrating the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary. Lourdes parish church up the hill in the town where Bernadette was baptised. Pictures of Bernadette and her parents. Looking at them again after many years (though I've been to Lourdes about 16 times, it's about 15 years since I visited the Boly Mill, the cachot, etc...) I was struck by the directness and strength of character shown in each of the faces. Surely not coincidental... The Boly Mill, Bernadette's birthplace. Bro. Henri in the one room "cachot" prison where the family lived after the mill went bankrupt.

Whilst in our Bordères community in the Pyrénées over New Year, Bro. Henri (community Superior there) and myself took the opportunity to drive to Lourdes for the day, having lunch in our community there. We undertook the Jubilee Year pilgrimage (150 yrs. since the apparitions), following the route marked out around the town that takes you to places of importance in the life of St. Bernadette (the Boly Mill, the "cachot" ex-prison cell where her poverty-stricken family were forced to live at one point, the Grotto, of course, etc...). One of the Jubilee pilgrimage symbols painted onto the pavements of Lourdes. Bro. Bernard Joliveau (one of our crowd) with a nun working in the Mass office in Lourdes. Bro. Bernard spent 6 months with us in Liverpool back in the late 1980s whilst I was a University student there. The grotto, on a cold winter's day. The Brothers' secondary school, St. Joseph's College, in the old town near the parish church where Bernadette Soubirous ...