If you visit Lourdes today, you can drink and bathe in the same healing spring waters that have been flowing since the time of the apparitions, as well as pray at the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared. The shrine also offers a full schedule of daily religious activities and services.

One of the greatest pilgrimage sites in the world today is that of Lourdes. Every year six million people travel to this southern French town to pray at the grotto where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times in 1858 to a young peasant girl, St. Bernadette Soubirous. In one of the visions, the Mother of God instructed Bernadette to drink from a spring, which began to flow from the place of the apparitions. This spring of natural water has since effected approximately five thousand miraculous physical cures, sixty-five of which have been recognized by the Church. In the third apparition, the Virgin Mary said to St. Bernadette, “I cannot promise you happiness in this world but only in the next.” In the final vision, the Mother of God revealed her identity with the words, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” With millions of moral and spiritual healings taking place each year at Lourdes, it is one of the preeminent pilgrimage sites in the world.