Lourdes and Art

Extract

The sacred buildings of Lourdes are not good. Lovers of architecture will find little in Lourdes except the rugged castle walls and tower, best seen from the roof of the Rosary Church, and a few houses in the old town such as the humble but truly picturesque dwelling of Bernadette, now buried between a raised causeway on the castle hill and a tall commercial building facing the street and belonging to her living kinsfolk. Few, if any, will dispute Huysmans’ contention that the wanton destruction of Bernadette’s parish church, a most valuable example of very early Romanesque, and the substitution of a blatant modern parody, was a disastrous folly. It is difficult to understand the mind of those who needlessly destroy a tenth-century parish church, yet further endeared by the prayers of the humble child whom Our Blessed Lady chose for her handmaiden. How rich is fair France in these most humble servants of God, so specially fitted to give confidence and kindle hope in our feeble, sinful souls ! St. Genevieve, St. Joan of Arc, St. Margaret Mary, the Blessed Curé of Ars, and now within living memory the meek, shy Bernadette Soubirous ! As St. Bernard said of Our Blessed Lady, there is in these her servants “nothing austere, nothing terrible.” The loss of the building where she received her Maker and made unnumbered visits to the Blessed Sacrament is one of the irreparable losses due to perverse human wilfulness.