On 22 July 1973 the Observer joined 2,000 English pilgrims on a trip to Lourdes in France. The shrine marking Bernadette Soubirous’s 1858 vision was transformed into a heady blend of powerful spiritual meeting place and gaudy tourist hotspot, with Virgin-shaped bottles of holy water, ‘plaques, medals, cufflinks, rosaries or shrines surrounded by fairy lights’.
Among those taking the waters were Jimmy Dooley, in a coma for four years after a savage mugging, and his mother and full-time carer Mary; Gladys Sunnuck, ‘a jolly 76-year-old’ suffering from elephantiasis in her legs was on her 26th visit; former soldier Bernard Power, 19, paralysed after a friendly fire incident, his first.
Miracles were vanishingly rare and ratifying the 70 to date was a torturous process, ‘A cure has to be instantaneous, permanent and scientifically inexplicable.’ Anyone claiming to be cured had to return to Lourdes for confirmation they had not relapsed and provide X-rays and medical records.
Cures that passed this stage were pored over by doctors, priests and theologians before reaching a verdict. Expectations were low among the English pilgrims; the canon in charge of the trip described it rather as a moment of ‘spiritual relaxation’.
‘If God does not find it possible to cure me, I won’t be disappointed,’ said Power, philosophically. ‘I didn’t hope for a cure,’ said Sunnuck. ‘I only hoped it would not get worse.’ A more realistic hope was not to die there – a Lourdes English cemetery was evidence that wasn’t always the case, and the trip led to one death, one broken bone and a case of pneumonia – the grotto waters are chilly. Back home, Dooley showed no improvement and, caring for him, Mary had not slept for two nights. ‘I must be getting the strength from somewhere,’ she said – that was, the writer concluded, ‘Little short of a miracle.’
