c. 2006 Religion News Service

LOURDES, France _ For nearly 150 years, millions of pilgrims have flocked to this tiny town nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains, where a 14-year-old peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous is said to have witnessed apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1858.

They come in wheelchairs, on stretchers and by foot, packing the sanctuary’s daily prayer services and evening candlelight processions in search of spiritual solace _ or perhaps instantaneous healing.

According to the Roman Catholic church, few of the millions of pilgrims have found the religious silver bullet for their ailments: of the 7,000 claimed cures, the church only recognizes 67 Lourdes-related miracles.

So earlier this year, local church leaders issued new directives that relaxed guidelines for non-miraculous, yet unexplainable healings. A new second tier of “unexpected,” “confirmed” or “exceptional” healings means more people will be able to claim a cure _ even if not a miracle.

The local Depeche du Midi newspaper asked, “Is this the end of miracles at Lourdes?” It’s a move, some skeptics say, aimed partly at countering the growing popularity of evangelical movements _ and competing with rival pilgrimage sites across Europe.

For some pilgrims, like Jim Quinn, a Londoner in his 50s whose hands are clenched in misshapen fists from Parkinson’s disease, the distinctions matter little.

“It’s not about personal cures, although I’m sure there have been some, ” Quinn said as he was wheeled to dinner one recent evening. “It’s really about other people. The ones you meet in the street, in church, in the crowd. People who need help.”

The local bishop who oversaw the revisions, Jacques Perrier of the nearby Tarbes diocese, dismissed any notion that the new standards were an attempt to compete with either other shrines or the recent growth of evangelicals.

“This redefinition has been under discussion for decades,” Perrier said, offering administration reasons rather than religious ones for the change. “What’s evolved over the years isn’t faith, but medicine and research.”

Under rules drafted by the Vatican nearly two centuries ago, miraculous healings must be almost instantaneous and permanent. Nor should those healed have benefited from any previous medical treatment.

But the Vatican’s stipulations clash with 21st century reality _ most Westerners seek medical treatment when they fall ill.

“People were thinking nothing is happening at Lourdes any more,” said Dr. Francois Bernard Michel, head of an international expert committee that meets yearly to determine whether reports of unusual, Lourdes-related healings are medically explainable.

“But things are happening,” Bernard Michel said. “And we don’t have the right to reject declarations of people who think in good faith they have been cured.”

Lourdes’ reputation for healing and meditation still resonates among European Catholics. Church attendance may be plummeting across the continent, but more than 6 million (mostly European) pilgrims flocked to Lourdes last year, the sanctuary says, and the number of visitors is growing.

Their presence has dramatically altered this small and once-hardscrabble rural town. Today, Lourdes is awash with hotels offering special services for the sick and restaurants plying menus of Italian pasta, German sausage and British fish and chips. Bernadette’s childhood home is now a small museum, and the town’s streets are lined with shops selling a dizzying array of Virgin Mary memorabilia.

Along with tourists, the town is also drawing a new crop of year-round residents _ like 62-year-old Jean Marmin, a one-time butcher from central France who moved to Lourdes six years ago. Today, Marmin has launched a second career, selling cured ham and sausage and the Pyrenees famously sharp-tasting Tomme cheeses.

“I hear stories of miracles and I think most people who recount them are sincere,” said Marmin, a jovial man sporting a red beret and apron. “But for me it’s a big question mark. Is it belief or coincidence? I don’t know.”

Lourdes officials say they carefully weigh that question on both medical and religious grounds. The sanctuary has a full-time doctor on hand to examine claims of miraculous healings _ usually several dozen are filed every year.

Those that appear plausible are then vetted by the international medical committee that meets each fall. But it is up to the local bishop _ Perrier for the moment _ to rule whether medically inexplicable cures also meet religious criteria for miracles.

Even though few claims make the final cut, many pilgrims do not appear to mind.

“I’m here to reflect on my life, on my family and the problems in the world,” said Odile Silve, a middle-aged woman from the Ivory Coast, eating a picnic dinner on the sanctuary’s grounds one evening. “We pray and have faith in the Lord and it bears fruit. Miracles or graces _ maybe it’s the same thing.”

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Often marginalized in everyday life, the handicapped and the sick like Quinn, the Parkinson’s patient, are embraced and revered at Lourdes. They lead the candlelight processions, pushed by volunteers from a panoply of European countries.

“A lot of people associate Lourdes with physical healing,” said the Rev. John Rice, a priest from Dorchester, England, who has visited Lourdes regularly since the 1980s. “But in actual fact, what happens is more of a bonding of people.”

“And besides,” he added, “even when you’re physically cured, you’re eventually going to get ill again. So it’s not the core of the matter .”

KRE/JL END BRYANT

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