Lourdes is beginning to come back to life after the weekend’s flash
floods left the French shrine town and its renowned grotto under 1.5m of
water when the River Gave de Pau burst its banks.
Work on the clean-up is continuing as efforts are made to remove the
20cm of mud dumped by the flooding around the grotto area and basilica.
Bishop Nicolas Brouwet has said, “The baths will be closed for many
days,” however, the first pilgrims are beginning to return to areas now
deemed safe.
Between 450 and 500 pilgrims, many elderly, sick and disabled were
evacuated from riverside hotels and other accommodation on Saturday and
brought to accommodation on higher ground.
Among the evacuees was a
group of 32 Irish pilgrims aged from their mid-20s up to their mid-80s,
from Whitehall parish in Dublin.
Spokesperson for the group, Rory McDyer of Rory McDyer Travel in
Dublin’s Clontarf described the scene in the immediate aftermath of the
floods as, “frightening.” He added, “The river was up to the level of
the wall.”
The group was evacuated to a nearby town hall and then spent the
night in a hospital before being flown out. Mr McDyer said he felt the
evacuation should have been ordered on Friday night, as the river was
already very swollen at that stage.
On Sunday, the most iconic spot of Lourdes, the Massabielle cave
where Our Lady appeared to St Bernadette in 1858, remained flooded with
debris including wood, candles and branches floating on the water.
Speaking to AFP, the Treasurer of the Sanctuaries, Thierry Castillo,
said last weekend’s floods were the most damaging in thirty years.
“We have serious damages that will run into hundreds of thousands of euro,” Mr Castillo explained.
During Sunday’s canonisation ceremony for seven new saints in Rome,
Pope Benedict prayed for Lourdes, saying: “Let us turn to the Virgin
Mary with a thought for Lourdes, the victim of flash floods that
inundated the grotto where the Madonna appeared.”
The cost of the flood damage and clean-up is estimated to be in the
region of €2 million and is particularly unwelcome news in view of
Lourdes’ financial deficit last year of €1 million, due to a fall in
donations linked to the recession.
Lourdes, located in the French
Pyrenees, draws six million pilgrims a year and has seen over sixty
miracles since the apparition in the 19th century.