The Irish and Lourdes

The Village of Bernadette: The Irish Connection

Colm Keane and Úna O’Hagan

Capel Island

2019

224 pages

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Some months  ago, while browsing in the Public Library, I picked up a copy of The Village of Bernadette: The Irish Connection. I was attracted as much by the beautiful depiction of the village of Lourdes on the cover as I was by the title!  This book was written by husband and wife team of Colm Keane and Úna O’Hagan, both of whom worked for several years in RTE as journalists and TV presenters. The book was published in 2019 by Capel Island Press and is readily available

(Sadly Colm has just died, sincere condolences and prayers to his wife and siblings.)

This book is well written and chronicles the connection that people from all walks of life in Ireland and across the world had over the span of years from 1913 until the 1960s, with the apparition of Our Lady to a fourteen year old shepherdess in 1858 in the  Cave at Massabielle.

The authors describe the life of poverty of Bernadette Soubirous, the shepherdess who tended the sheep to help her family survive. She received several visits from “The Beautiful Lady”  as she called her,  until the local priest suggested she ask her what her name was. On doing so on next visit the reply was startling:

“I am the Immaculate Conception.” 

This convinced the priest of the genuineness of Bernadette’s story as he knew there was no way she could have known how amazing this reply was. Only four years earlier in 1854 Pope Pius IX had proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, referring to the fact that Our Lady was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her conception in her mother’s womb. 

The chapters in this book move easily through a brief story of Bernadette’s life and the effects of the apparition across the globe, especially in Ireland. Things were not at all easy for Bernadette who never lost her faith in whom she saw; she joined the Sisters of Charity in Nevers and tragically died there at the age of thirty-five from tuberculosis. She was canonised in 1933 

What is very striking about this delightful book is the way it brings to life the great faith of so many people in Ireland who made great sacrifices to get to Lourdes in times of very  challenging travel arrangements as well as scarcity of money. There were amusing insights too into new experiences e.g. coffee instead of tea, warm temperatures … foreign travel was not something that happened to many! There were truly wonderful accounts of the many cures, all very carefully researched, medically approved and, in many cases interviews with those cured. Interspersed throughout are accounts of well known people from John F. Kennedy to Princess Grace and Seamus Heaney and many who visited Lourdes regularly as pilgrims or sometimes sceptics who visited for spiritual nourishment or to check it out with very positive outcomes.

This is an inspiring book which will encourage people to realise that God’s logic and the logic of the world do not coincide.