Relics of St. Bernadette, the visionary of Our Lady of Lourdes, will tour the United States on an unprecedented pilgrimage
Relics of St. Bernadette will tour the United States from September 18, 2026 to August 2027, beginning at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The “Path of Grace” pilgrimage will include almost 140 stops nationwide, roughly twice the number of locations visited during the 2022 tour. The 2022 tour attracted more than 3,000 participants, revealing strong interest in Catholic devotions across the country. The journey follows the story of Bernadette Soubirous, the 14‑year‑old who witnessed apparitions in Lourdes nearly 170 years ago.
19 days ago
A new nationwide pilgrimage will bring the relics of St. Bernadette Soubirous to nearly 140 locations across the United States from September 18, 2026, through August 2027. Called the “Path of Grace,” the tour will expand on a 2022 pilgrimage and include universities for the first time.
The pilgrimage will begin at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Organizers plan almost 140 stops—nearly twice the number included in the previous American tour, which visited 45 locations between April and August 2022.
The 2022 tour drew large crowds and substantial interest in Catholic devotions. More than 3,000 people attended a parish gathering in Mineral Wells, Texas, while pastors in Florida and Miami reported unusually high participation, including sustained demand for confession.
For the first time, the relics will visit universities, including Villanova University in Pennsylvania, where Pope Leo XIV studied. The university stops are intended to bring the story of Lourdes to younger people; the tour coordinator, Toni J. Pallatto, described young people as “the future of Catholicism.”
The American tour will coincide with the pope’s scheduled visit to Lourdes on September 27, one day before the relics are expected to arrive at Villanova.
Bernadette Soubirous was 14 when she reported encounters with a mysterious woman at the Massabielle grotto outside Lourdes. Between February and July 1858, she reported 18 apparitions; the figure later identified herself as the Immaculate Conception and requested that a chapel be built at the site.
During one encounter on February 25, Bernadette was instructed to drink and wash at a spring that was not yet visible. After she dug into the muddy ground, water appeared, eventually becoming one of the central devotional features of the Lourdes sanctuary.
Bernadette’s account attracted intense attention despite her poverty and lack of institutional authority. She maintained that she had been given a message rather than the power to compel belief. She later entered religious life, died in 1879 at age 35, and was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1933.
More than 7,000 healings have been reported in connection with Lourdes, but the Church has officially recognized 70 as miraculous. The distinction separates reported cures from those that have undergone formal ecclesial recognition.
The pilgrimage presents Bernadette’s relics as a means of connecting Catholics with the saint’s life and memory. Its organizers describe the tour not simply as the movement of a religious object, but as a communal experience of faith and pilgrimage.
The official pilgrimage website will provide itinerary updates, alerts, Mass intentions at the Sanctuary of Lourdes, remote candle-lighting, and the submission of prayer intentions to be carried to France. Parishes may apply to host the relics, and Catholics can participate in an accompanying prayer journey through the Hallow app.
Kenneth Schwanger, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes in Miami, said the appeal of the pilgrimage extends beyond historical information and statistics, emphasizing the importance of the experience itself.
Assess how the Bernadette relics pilgrimage reflects Catholic devotion to Marian apparitions
The Bernadette relics pilgrimage reflects Catholic devotion to Marian apparitions chiefly by showing that the faithful approach the apparitions through the saint who received them—not by treating the relics as divine objects or the apparition as a new article of faith.
Bernadette’s relics direct attention to her life and witness. Pius XII observed that pilgrims came to Nevers, where her relics are kept, in order “to learn from her how the message of Lourdes applies to our day.” The pilgrimage therefore makes the apparition concrete: Mary’s call to prayer, conversion, and Christian discipleship is interpreted through Bernadette’s fidelity.
This is characteristic of Catholic devotion. Mary is honored, but the ultimate purpose is to lead believers to Christ. John Paul II described the Lourdes procession as a journey “behind Christ,” while Marian devotion gives that journey its form and maternal character.
Bringing Bernadette’s relics among the faithful reflects Catholic sacramental and incarnational sensibility: grace reaches human beings through visible, bodily, historical realities. A relic does not possess magical power; it recalls a person transformed by grace and encourages imitation of the saint.
The pilgrimage also turns devotion into movement. John Paul II interpreted the processions requested at Lourdes as meaning that faith must become “a journey” rather than remain merely verbal. More recently, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith described pilgrimage as a confession of faith, a song of hope, and an encounter of love. A relics pilgrimage thus allows people to pray, grieve, hope, and seek conversion together.
The Church distinguishes Marian apparitions from the definitive public Revelation contained in Scripture and Tradition. Private revelations, even when recognized by the Church, do not belong to the deposit of faith and cannot add to Christ’s definitive revelation; they may help Christians live it more fully in a particular historical period. Consequently, Catholics are not obliged to accept Lourdes in the same way they must receive the Gospel.
This distinction protects the pilgrimage from two opposite errors:
A sound devotion uses Bernadette and Lourdes as means of returning to Christ, prayer, penance, the sacraments, and the Church’s faith. The theological criterion is precisely whether an apparition leads people toward Christ rather than away from him.
The pilgrimage also reflects the Church’s discernment of apparitions. Lourdes was not simply accepted because of popular enthusiasm: Bernadette’s testimony was examined and officially sanctioned by episcopal authority in 1862. The Church’s recognition gives the devotion an ecclesial framework, while still leaving private revelations at a lower level of authority than public Revelation.
Historically, the Holy See connected Lourdes with the Church’s proclamation of the Immaculate Conception, while carefully recognizing that an apparition was not needed to establish papal teaching. Thus devotion to Lourdes can deepen appreciation of Marian doctrine without replacing the Church’s actual sources of faith.
Overall assessment: the Bernadette relics pilgrimage is a strong expression of Catholic Marian devotion when it is understood as a journey with Mary toward Christ, guided by the witness of a canonized saint and regulated by the Church. Its deepest fruit is not fascination with the extraordinary, but renewed prayer, conversion, hope, and fidelity to the Gospel.