Pope Leo XIV to Visit Lourdes Shrine During Historic France Trip

Pope Leo XIV will travel to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes this weekend as part of a four-day apostolic journey to France — the first official papal state visit to the country in 18 years.

Located near the Spanish border, Lourdes draws millions of pilgrims each year, among them sick and disabled believers seeking a cure from the spring water in the site's grotto.

The shrine's fame traces back to Bernadette Soubirous, a poor, uneducated girl who suffered from asthma. Between February and July 1858, she reported 18 visions of a lady dressed in white at the Grotto of Massabielle. The Catholic Church later accepted the visions as apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

Believers hold that during the ninth apparition, Bernadette was told: "Go and drink at the spring and wash yourself there." The Church officially recognised her visions in 1862, after which pilgrims began arriving in large numbers. Bernadette later joined the Sisters of Charity convent in Nevers, where she died at 35; she was canonised in 1933 by Pope Pius XI.

The water, drawn freely from the sanctuary's taps and fountains, is said by believers to hold healing power, though it has no therapeutic properties. Many pilgrims carry some home.

Lourdes receives roughly 3 million pilgrims a year, including about 60,000 who are sick or disabled. The town hall ranks it the fourth most-visited Catholic pilgrimage site globally, after the Vatican, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City and the Basilica of Our Lady of Aparecida in Brazil.

The Grotto of Massabielle is one of 22 sites forming the sanctuary, which includes three basilicas — the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary and the underground Basilica of Saint Pius X. Pilgrims can walk one of two Stations of the Cross before bathing in spring water kept at 12 degrees Celsius (53.6 Fahrenheit).

The Church has officially recognised 72 healings as miraculous at Lourdes out of more than 7,000 cases examined since 1858.

Fewer than 15,000 people live in Lourdes, yet its nearly 10,000 hotel rooms and some 21,200 beds give it France's second-largest hotel capacity after Paris. Accommodation prices have soared ahead of the visit, with some hotels charging more than 2,000 euros ($2,300) a night.

Most pilgrims come from France — 42%, according to the sanctuary — but many visitors from Eastern Europe are expected. After the Cold War's end, Catholics in Central and Eastern Europe gained the freedom to travel west, sharply raising pilgrim numbers from former Communist states, a trend that persists. Poland ranks sixth among more than 160 nations sending pilgrims.

During the visit, mosaics by former Jesuit artist Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik on the facade of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary will be covered. The Vatican confirmed this summer that a church trial against Rupnik is ongoing. Lourdes Bishop Jean-Marc Micas announced the move last month, after a decision two years ago that the mosaics would no longer be lit during evening prayer; the basilica's entrance-door mosaics were covered in March 2025. The scandal became public in late 2022 when Italian blogs reported claims by women and nuns of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse dating to the 1990s.

Leo will meet seven survivors of sexual abuse assaulted as children or adults, according to the Bishops' Conference of France. A 2021 report estimated 330,000 children were sexually abused over 70 years by church personnel in France.

The sanctuary said the pope will land at Tarbes airport on Saturday and begin with a prayer at the Grotto of the Apparitions. On Sunday morning he will meet bishops at the French Bishops' Conference, then celebrate Mass on the Prairie, followed by the Angelus prayer. In the afternoon he will meet staff and sick people at the Accueil Notre-Dame, closing the visit with the Rosary and torchlight procession.