The pastoral theme and message of our pilgrimage this year are the very words that Mary spoke to Bernadette when she appeared to her on the sixteenth apparition on Thursday 25 March 1858;‘I am the Immaculate Conception.’
The message and theme for Lourdes this year is; ‘Blessed are the poor, the Kingdom of God is theirs.’The very word ‘poor’ can be very emotional and even loaded.