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In Lourdes Pope Leo hears testimonies of service, suffering and hope
During his visit to the Accueil Notre-Dame in Lourdes, Pope Leo XIV hears three testimonies from people whose lives have been shaped by service to the sick, by suffering and by their experience of faith.
Vatican News
Mathias Terrier, Director of the Accueil Notre-Dame centre in Lourdes, welcomed Pope Leo XIV to the facility, which enables people who are sick or living with disabilities to make their pilgrimage to Lourdes.
The Pope’s visit to the centre took place in the afternoon of Sunday, 27 September 2026, on the third day of his apostolic visit to France.
Presenting Accueil Notre-Dame, Terrier explained that since its inauguration in 1997, some 750,000 sick or disabled people have stayed there. Yet, he noted, the deepest question is not one of numbers.
“How can it be that their fragility is the cement of the stones of this building?” he asked. And then he widened the question: “How can it be that the most fragile are the cement of this human edifice” made up of volunteers, carers, religious and employees from across the world?
At Lourdes, he suggested, the usual order of things is quietly reversed. Those who appear to need the most help become those who reveal something essential to everyone else.
What becomes important, he said, is “the gesture that relieves; the word that consoles; the look that soothes. The prayer that binds us; the sacraments that carry us in Hope.”
“I dressed his wound; God healed him”
Then it was the turn of a doctor from Laval, who has practised medicine for 40 years. He took to the podium to share his experience of caring for patients, and he recalled the words of Ambroise Paré, displayed at the entrance of his hospital: “I dressed his wound; God healed him.”
For the doctor, these words express the humility required in medicine. “To care requires giving of oneself, sharing our humanity,” he said, adding that the vocation should not be lived simply through “having” or “being”, but through “loving”.
“Lourdes allows us to make the most beautiful journey by going to meet the other, and particularly the most fragile,” he said. The sick, he added, can reveal to others their own vulnerability.
“In serving our sick brothers and sisters, it is God whom we serve,” he said, and this includes all the different forms this service can take, from the Good Samaritan and the innkeeper to simply being “the mount” that carries the wounded person.
Pope Leo XIV visits the Accueil Notre-Dame in Lourdes (@Vatican Media)
Encountering the grace of Lourdes
The third testimony came from Marguerite Hourt, who first came to Lourdes at the age of 20 to accompany sick and disabled pilgrims from the Diocese of Metz. For more than 14 years, she returned during her holidays to help them during their pilgrimage.
In 2016, a bicycle accident left her paraplegic. When she returned to Lourdes the following year, she said that she no longer understood her situation, that her faith had faltered and that she was angry with Mary.
“I often went to pray at the Grotto, to cry out my despair and my rage,” she recalled. “And it was at the Grotto that I found consolation from Her.”
After returning home, Hourt worked to regain her independence, learning to drive again, finding an apartment, training for a new profession and seeking employment. After sending dozens of applications, she applied for a position as a receptionist at the Sanctuary of Lourdes.
“And that is the grace I received: to work in this place that I love,” she said.
Her suffering has not disappeared, she explained, and she continues to struggle each day with her disability. But she now serves at the Sanctuary, welcoming pilgrims and helping them encounter Lourdes.
“I am proud to now be at the service of welcoming pilgrims,” she told the Pope, “to enable them to access the grace of this unique place, to pass on my faith.”
Pope Leo XIV visits the Accueil Notre-Dame (@Vatican Media)
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