This pocket guide combines a mix of practical information, history, devotional commentary, prayers and readings for pilgrims to Lourdes today. Universally known throughout the Catholic world, many hundreds of pilgrimage groups visit Lourdes each year from Britain and Ireland. It also includes a detailed A-Z guide to places and events, the engaging story of Bernadette, and other places of interest nearby for extra days out.

Coming to Lourdes is for most of the visitors a great spiritual adventure. There is the warmth of the community of Lourdes. Here everybody works together to make sure that every pilgrim is happy and well cared for. Lourdes is fully on the go between Easter and All Saints (1st November) with a rich programme of processions, prayer-sessions, masses, confessions, adorations, blessings, rosary-sessions and other devotional activities in several languages. And every evening that highlight of the day: Worlds most exciting torchlight procession, the number of people indicated by the extent of the procession and the lights. A wonderful and stunning experience of faith. This book will guide you through the ceremonies and processions, and gives the full story about what happened in 1858. As told by those direct involved, including that 14-year old peasant girl Bernadette and people that were sceptical about Lourdes from the beginning.

Pilgrimage in the Western world is enjoying a growing popularity, perhaps more so now than at any time since the Middle Ages. The Pilgrim Journey tells the fascinating story of how pilgrimage was born and grew in antiquity, how it blossomed in the Middle Ages and faltered in subsequent centuries, only to re-emerge stronger than before in modern times. James Harpur describes the pilgrim routes and sacred destinations past and present, the men and women making the journey, the many challenges of travel, and the spiritual motivations and rewards. He also explores the traditional stages of pilgrimage, from preparation, departure, and the time on the road, to the arrival at the shrine and the return home. At the heart of pilgrimage is a spiritual longing that has existed from time immemorial. The Pilgrim Journey is both the colourful chronicle of numerous pilgrims of centuries past searching for heaven on earth, and an illuminating guide for today's spiritual traveller.

A guide to vacationing, from the 1800s to the present

Now thoroughly revised and updated, this encyclopedia documents the diversity of shrines, temples, holy places, and pilgrimage sites sacred to the world's major religious traditions, and illustrates their elemental place in human culture. As interest increases in the role of world religions in history and international affairs, the new edition of Encyclopedia of Sacred Places—which arrives 15 years after the publication of the original edition—provides new and updated information on site-specific religious practice and spiritually significant locations around the globe. While many of the entries describe specific places, like the Erawan Shrine and the Rock of Cashel, others examine types of sacred sites, pilgrimages, and practices. With articles that describe both the places and their associated traditions and history, this reference book reveals the enormous diversity and cultural significance of religious practice worldwide. For students and teachers of classes ranging from high school geography to university-level courses in religious studies, geography, anthropology, and sociology, this book provides essential reference on places of great significance to the world's various faith traditions.

This book explores the phenomenon of Christian pilgrimage, pointing to its origins in the exodus and subsequent wilderness experience of the Jews, the medieval heyday when millions of pilgrims spend months traveling across Europe, and the modern revival that has blurred the lines between pilgrimage and tourism and made places such as Iona, Taize, and Santiago di Compostella the mecca for contemporary seekers and travelers. Lavishily illustrated, the book begins with the history and then covers pilgrimages in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, Norway, France, Spain, Italy, Bosnia-Herzogovina, and Poland. Providing a mixture of history and fact with vivid personal experiences and pilgrims' own accounts and prayers, Ian Bradley brings to life one of the most vibrant expressions of Christian spirituality.

Plastic Madonnas, packaged holy tours, and biblical theme parks can arouse discomfort, laughter, and even revulsion in religious believers and nonbelievers alike. Scholars, too, often see the intermingling of religion and commerce as a corruption of true spirituality. Suzanne K. Kaufman challenges these assumptions in her examination of the Lourdes pilgrimage in late nineteenth-century France.Consuming Visions offers new ways to interpret material forms of worship, female piety, and modern commercial culture. Kaufman argues that the melding of traditional pilgrimage activities with a newly developing mass culture produced fresh expressions of popular faith. For the devout women of humble origins who flocked to the shrine, this intensely exciting commercialized worship offered unprecedented opportunities to connect with the sacred and express their faith in God.New devotional activities at Lourdes transformed the act of pilgrimage: the train became a moving chapel, and popular entertainments such as wax museums offered vivid recreations of visionary events. Using the press and the strategies of a new advertising industry to bring a mass audience to Lourdes, Church authorities remade centuries-old practices of miraculous healing into a modern public spectacle. These innovations made Lourdes one of the most visited holy sites in Catholic Europe.Yet mass pilgrimage also created problems. The development of Lourdes, while making religious practice more democratically accessible, touched off fierce conflicts over the rituals and entertainments provided by the shrine. These conflicts between believers and secularists played out in press scandals across the European continent. By taking the shrine seriously as a site of mass culture, Kaufman not only breaks down the opposition between sacred and profane but also deepens our understanding of commercialized religion as a fundamental feature of modernity itself.

I believe that almost any very motivated person with a righteous causein any sphere of endeavorcan fight censorship by a status-quo-minded bureaucracyand win, and then by effectively spreading the truth can make a significant difference. . . like the persistent file clerk Erin Brockovitch whose courageous investigating of a giant utility company eventually established that the health of countless people had been been severely compromised by leakage of Chromium 6 into the groundwater.

Despite the forces of secularization in Europe, old pilgrimage routes are attracting huge numbers of people and given new meanings in the process. In pilgrimage, religious or spiritual meanings are interwoven with social, cultural and politico-strategic concerns. This book explores three such concerns under intense debate in Europe: gender and sexual emancipation, (trans)national identities in the context of migration, and European unification and religious identifications in a changing religious landscape. The interdisciplinary contributions to this book explore a range of such controversies and issues including: Africans renewing family ties at Lourdes, Swedish women at midlife or young English men testing their strength on the Camino to Santiago de Compostela, New Age pilgrims and sexuality, Saints’ festivals in Spain and Brittany, conservative Catholics challenging Europe’s liberal policies on abortion, Polish migrants and French Algerians reconfiguring their transnational identity by transporting their familiar Madonna to their new home, new sacred spaces created such as the shrine of Our Lady of Santa Cruz, traditional Christian saints such as Mary Magdalene given new meanings as new age goddess, and foundation legends of shrines revived by new visionaries. Pilgrimage sites function as nodes in intersecting networks of religious discourses, geographical routes and political preoccupations, which become stages for playing out the boundaries between home and abroad, Muslims and Christians, pilgrimage and tourism, Europe and the world. This book shows how the old routes of Europe are offering inspirational opportunities for making new journeys.

The Rough Guide Snapshot to the Pyrenees is the ultimate travel guide to this craggy mountainous region, and also includes coverage of the beguiling Basque country. It guides you through the region with reliable information and comprehensive accounts of all the sights and attractions, from surfing big waves in Biarritz and inspecting pre-historic paintings in the Ari�ge valley to taking a trip on the charming Petit Train Jaune and exploring dramatic Cathar castles in the Corbi�res. Detailed maps and up-to-date listings pinpoint the best caf�s, restaurants, hotels, shops, bars and nightlife, ensuring you have the most memorable possible, whether passing through, staying for the weekend or longer. Also included is the Basics section from The Rough Guide to France, with all the practical information you need for travelling in and around the country, including transport, food, drink, costs, health and festivals. Also published as part of The Rough Guide to France. Full coverage: Bayonne, Biarritz, St Jean-de-Luz, Parc National des Pyr�n�es, Pau, Lourdes, Tarbes, Vall�e d'Aspe, Vall�e d'Ossau, Gave de Pau, Cauterets, Gavarnie and its cirque, Bar�ges, Luchon, Vall�e de l'Ariege, Monts�gur, Vall�e de l'Aude, Cathar castles, Perpignan, The T�t valley (Equivalent printed page extent 102 pages).