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Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine, Villianur, Puducherry | |
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Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes | |
11°54′41″N79°45′38″E / 11.911262°N 79.760664°E | |
Location | Villianur, Puducherry |
Country | India |
Denomination | Catholic Church |
Sui iuris church | Latin Church |
Website | www |
History | |
Status | Parish church and Marian shrine |
Founded | 8 April 1877 |
Dedication | Our Lady of Lourdes |
Events | 8 May 1886 - The statue was crowned in the name of Pope Leo XIII, and permanent plenary indulgence attached, declared as a Shrine. |
Architecture | |
Functional status | Active |
Architect(s) | Fr. Tarbes, M.E.P |
Architectural type | Chapel |
Style | Gothic Revival [ citation needed ] |
Groundbreaking | 1866 |
Administration | |
Archdiocese | Pondicherry and Cuddalore |
Parish | Villianur |
Clergy | |
Archbishop | Francis Kalist |
Rector | Fr. S. Pitchaimuthu |
Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine (French: Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes) is a Catholic Marian shrine and a parish church in Villianur, Puducherry, India. The shrine is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of Our Lady of Lourdes.
Pope Leo XIII issued a pontifical decree of coronation on 21 February 1886 towards the venerated Marian statue and declared the site an official Marian shrine. The former Archbishop of Pondicherry, François-Jean-Marie Laouënan executed the rite of coronation on 8 May 1886.
In 1858, following the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France, the first church and grotto dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes outside France were constructed in Villianur.
In 1867, the MEP missionaries in Puducherry wished to build a Chapel at Villianur which is 13 kilometers from Pondicherry, on the road to Villupuram. Hence they bought a piece of land at Villianur and Rev. Fr. Gou, then procurator of the Puducherry mission after a long negotiation with the Hindu temple authorities of Thirukameswarer Gogilambigai Temple started to build a Chapel at Kanuvapet on the outskirts of Villianur. It is said that the building of the church was sponsored by the thanksgiving offering of Dr.Lephine's family for the miraculous cure of his daughter.
It took 10 years to complete the chapel. Rev. Fr. Tarbes a cousin brother of St. Bernadette, the visionary of Lourdes, was appointed as the parish priest of Villianur mission. Since he had a direct report of the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes, this chapel is the first in the world to be named after Our Lady of Lourdes outside Lourdes, France.
In 1877, with the help of St. Bernadette, a beautiful statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was brought from Lourdes, France, and installed in the chapel's grotto. The statue, associated with numerous miracles, arrived in Puducherry on 4 April 1877. The box containing the statue was dropped three times on the way to the cathedral, but arrived intact and was sent on to Villianur.
The statue was claimed to be associated with a number of miracles in the late nineteenth century. In 1885 the archbishop Laouënan went to Rome and provided a report of the alleged miracles that took place at the shrine to Pope Leo XIII. The archbishop received the pontifical decree on 21 February 1886 to declare the site an official shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes and to canonically crown the statue.
On the archbishop's return from Rome on 8 May 1886, a pontifical high mass was held, with the celebration being witnessed by around 40,000 people. At the mass, the archbishop crowned the statue in the name of the pope, and declared the church as the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, Villianur, attaching permanent plenary indulgences to the shrine.
In 1923, walls were constructed around the pond in front of the chapel. The pond, once used as a water reservoir for the irrigation of the lands around and water came from the big Ousteri Lake which is 10 km away from here. And this pond was constructed by Fr. Lesbond, the Parish Priest, with donations from Zigon organized by Mr. Lesage. Mr. Larocgue from the people in Zigon got a statue from Lourdes and in 1924 and a solemn ceremony took place to install the statue in the middle of the sacred pond after the due consecration of the statue and the pond.
It is believed by the people here that the pond water is miraculous and has the ability to cure the sick and bring good fortune. This is the only Catholic church in Asia having a sacred pond in front of the church. [1]
In 1930, the shrine's flagpole was installed. In 1956, a home and school for orphans were established in the name of Our Lady of Lourdes.
19 years after Lourdes apparitions, the first church and grotto for Our Lady of Lourdes was constructed in 1877. The centenary celebrations was celebrated on 10 September 1977. As a remembrance of the centenary celebrations, Rev. Fr. Duissen built a big grotto in the garden of the church, which was consecrated by bishop Venmani S. Selvanather on 10 October 1978. The grotto which was inside the church was modified according as per the instruction of the Second Vatican Council.[ citation needed ]
On 8 October 2011, on the 125th anniversary of the crowning of the statue by the Pope, Archbishop Antony Anandarayar re-crowned the image with a diamond crown donated by devotees.
Annual feast of Our Lady of Lourdes shrine commence with the nine days of Novena and flag hoisting on the 6th day after Easter Sunday. The car procession is done during these days. The feast day is on the 15th day after Easter. This is a Puducherry state Christian festival.
Every first Saturday in the month of August, The Holy Water from Lourdes Church, France is poured into the 'Sacred Pond' at Villianur Shrine. This event is attended by thousands of devotees every year.
As a sign of gratitude to Our Lady, for saving the city from a cyclone, the first pilgrimage on foot took place on 10 October 1977 from Pondicherry and this tradition is still continued on the second Saturday in the month of October. It starts from Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Pondicherry and ends in the shrine covering approximately 12 km.
As the existing Church could not accommodate the growing number of pilgrims, a new Church is planned with the approval of our Archbishop Most. Rev. Dr. Antony Anandarayar. On 10 September 2011, Rev. Fr. A. Arulanandam, the Vicar General of Archdiocese blessed and officially commenced the construction work for the Church. Rev. Fr. C. Joseph Arumaiselvam, the procurator and many other priests were present at the event. Construction was completed in 2017.
Lourdes is a market town situated in the Pyrenees. It is part of the Hautes-Pyrénées department in the Occitanie region in southwestern France. Prior to the mid-19th century, the town was best known for its Château fort, a fortified castle that rises up from a rocky escarpment at its center.
Bernadette Soubirous, also known as Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, and is best known for experiencing apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto. These apparitions occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858, and the woman who appeared to her identified herself as the "Immaculate Conception".
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is a Catholic Marian shrine and pilgrimage site dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes in the town of Lourdes, Hautes-Pyrénées, France. The sanctuary includes several religious buildings and monuments around the grotto of Massabielle, the place where the events of the Lourdes apparitions occurred in 1858, among them are three basilicas, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, the Rosary Basilica and the Basilica of St. Pius X, respectively known as the upper, lower and underground basilica.
Carfin Lourdes Grotto, a Roman Catholic shrine in Scotland dedicated to Our Lady of Lourdes, was created in the early twentieth century. The "Carfin Grotto", as the shrine is locally referred to, was the brainchild of Father, later Canon Thomas N. Taylor, parish priest of St. Francis Xavier's Parish in the small, mining village of Carfin, which lies two miles east of Motherwell, in the West of Scotland. Following a trip to France's principal Marian shrine at Lourdes, Canon Taylor's vision was to build a religious memorial in honour of Our Blessed Lady based on the template of the Grotto of Massabielle. To realize this vision became his life's work. Since its opening in the early 1920s, the "grotto" has attracted pilgrims in the hundreds of thousands and its environs have been modified and enhanced with rich Catholic symbols and buildings. The grotto shrine offers a pilgrimage season with Sunday processions, rosaries, outdoor Masses and dedicated Feast Day events which run annually from early May until late September.
Our Lady of Lourdes is a title of the Virgin Mary. She is venerated under this title by the Roman Catholic Church due to her apparitions that occurred in Lourdes, France. The first apparition of 11 February 1858, of which Bernadette Soubirous told her mother that a "Lady" spoke to her in the cave of Massabielle while she was gathering firewood with her sister and a friend. Similar apparitions of the "Lady" were reported on 18 occasions that year, until the climax revelation in which she introduced herself as: "the Immaculate Conception". On 18 January 1862, the local Bishop of Tarbes Bertrand-Sévère Laurence endorsed the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes.
The Chapel of Graces of the Miraculous Virgin or informally the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, is a Marian shrine located in Paris, France.
Our Lady of Prompt Succor is a Roman Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary associated with a wooden devotional image of the Madonna and Child enshrined in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America. The image is closely associated with Mother Saint Michel, the Superior of the New Orleans Ursulines.
Abbé Dominique Peyramale was a Catholic priest in the town of Lourdes in France during the apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes to the peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. According to Bernadette, her visions occurred at the grotto of Massabielle, just outside Lourdes.
The Lourdes apparitions are several Marian apparitions reported in 1858 by Bernadette Soubirous, the 14-year-old daughter of a miller, in the town of Lourdes in Southern France.
The Basilica of Our Lady of Good Health, also known as Sanctuary of Our Lady of Velankanni, is a Christian shrine located at the town of Velankanni, Tamil Nadu, India. The shrine is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Flatrock is a town in Newfoundland and Labrador. The town had a population of 1,722 in the Canada 2021 Census.
The Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica within the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France. Its main theme is a celebration and depiction of the Rosary.
A Lourdes grotto is a replica of the grotto where the Lourdes apparitions occurred in 1858, in the town of Lourdes in France, now part of the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes. Some Lourdes grottos are almost identical reproductions of the scene of the apparitions, with statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and Bernadette Soubirous in a natural or artificial cave, while others may differ from the original in size, shape or style.
Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, situated on the south boulevard of Pondicherry in Puducherry, India, is an oriental specimen of Gothic Revival architecture. It contains rare stained glass panels depicting events from the life of Christ and saints of the Catholic Church. In recent years it has become one of the famous pilgrimage spots for Christians.
The Basilica of Our Lady of Lanka is a Roman Catholic basilica in Tewatte, Sri Lanka. Being thus in a somewhat distant suburb of Colombo, it comes under the purview of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Colombo and is a site of pilgrimage for Sri Lankan Catholics. The church is home to the venerated statue of Our Lady of Lanka.
The National Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, better known as the Church of Lourdes de Manila, is a Catholic national shrine in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines. The church is administered by the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin of the Philippine Ecclesiastical Province and under the Vicariate of San Pedro Bautista of the Latin Church diocese of Cubao.
François-Jean-Marie Laouënan was a member of Paris Foreign Missions Society and was the archbishop of Archdiocese of Pondicherry. On 24 July 1868 he was appointed to succeed Bishop Joseph-Isidore Godelle as Vicar Apostolic of Pondicherry. He was consecrated as a bishop on 11 October 1868. When Pope Leo XII established Catholic hierarchy in India, Mgr. Laouënan was appointed as Archbishop of the same see on 25 November 1886. He was the archbishop until his death on 29 September 1892. He was succeeded by Joseph-Adolphe Gandy.
The Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes is located at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States, and is a reproduction of the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Lourdes, France. The current Grotto was built in 1896, replacing a wooden grotto built on August 22, 1878. An artificial rock cave, the Grotto is used by its visitors as a sacred space for prayer, meditation, and outdoor Mass.
The Shrine of St. Bernadette is a Roman Catholic church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States.
The Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto in Heiligenkreuz is a Lourdes grotto in Heiligenkreuz, a municipality in the Vienna Woods in the district of Baden near Vienna, which was created in 2017 by the Heiligenkreuz Abbey as a religious monument in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Like all similar grottoes of Our Lady of Lourdes around the world, it is reminiscent of the world-famous grotto of the apparition of the Virgin Mary in the French pilgrimage town of Lourdes.