The Grotto at Lourdes

A carte-de-visite showing the Messabielle grotto at Lourdes, dated verso in French 'Thursday 23 March 71 / Grotto of Lourdes and / Immaculate Fountain.' Beneath this at the bottom edge, the date is repeated and 'Pilgrimage from Pau' is added. It's 54 miles from Pau to Lourdes.

Some people believe that in 1858 Our Lady made a series of eighteen appearances to a peasant girl called Bernadette Soubirous (canonised as St Bernadette of Lourdes in 1933). During the sixteenth visitation she identified herself (in Occitan, the local dialect), saying 'I am the Immaculate Conception.'

A belief common among the faithful since the Middle Ages, this doctrine had only recently been promulgated as dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854. Still widely misunderstood by non-Catholics to this day, the Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with Jesus and how he was conceived. Rather, it means that, unlike the rest of humanity, Our Lady did not inherit the stain of Original Sin. All babies are born with the stain of Original Sin (understood today as the absence of grace), inherited from Adam and Eve as a result of their disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Except Mary. She was chosen to be the Mother of God before she was even conceived (dogmatically predestined from eternity), so her soul was immaculate from the moment of her conception in St Anne's womb.

Photographed by Jacques Provost of Toulouse.