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National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes
September 22–23, 2026

A “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to venerate relics of St. Bernadette Soubirous!

Despite driving rain and some of the worst road conditions she said she has ever encountered, Brooke White left her home in Wayne, Pa., at 6 a.m. Sept. 22 for the two-and-a-half-hour trek to Emmitsburg.

Brooke White has an intimate moment with the relics of St. Bernadette Soubirous Sept. 22, 2026, at the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in Emmitsburg. (Kevin J. Parks/CR Staff)

A self-described “revert” to Catholicism who believes her return to the faith five years ago was guided by the Blessed Virgin Mary, White was drawn to what she called a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to venerate relics of St. Bernadette Soubirous.

The relics – rib fragments, kneecaps and samples of muscle, hair and skin from the French saint – were at the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes as one of the first stops on a “Journey of Grace” tour of 140 locations across the country. Also on hand were two sizable rocks from Lourdes, France.

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Tuesday, September 22

9:00 AM

  • Open for Public Veneration in St. Mary’s Glass Chapel

11:00 AM

  • Mass in St. Mary’s Glass Chapel

11:45 AM

  • Rosary Procession with Relic of St. Bernadette & Confessions

4:30 PM

  • Public Veneration Concludes

5:00 PM

  • Shrine Closes

Wednesday, September 23

9:00 AM

  • Open for Public Veneration in St. Mary’s Glass Chapel

11:00 AM

  • Mass with Anointing of the Sick in St. Mary’s Glass Chapel

11:45 AM

  • Rosary & Confessions

4:30 PM

  • Public Veneration Concludes

5:00 PM

  • Shrine Closes

National Shrine Grotto

National Shrine Grotto

National Shrine Grotto

The stone wall reproduction of the Lourdes Grotto in France was initiated by President Fr. John A. Watterson and constructed by Mount St. Mary's seminarians in 1875. The purpose of the project was to commemorate the apparitions which had taken place 17 years earlier in France and which had been approved in 1862. ​(Photo taken by William Henry Tipton, circa 1890s)

On December 1, 2007, Bishop Perrier visited the Grotto of Lourdes in Emmitsburg and celebrated Mass in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Hill. He also presented the Grotto with a precious stone from Lourdes, France, taken near the miraculous spring where Our Lady told St. Bernadette to dig.