• eight ‘18 Wimbledon College leavers;

• two recent Ursuline High School leavers;

• two ‘18 leavers from other schools;

• four other OWs returning for a second year of service;

• the ever-amazing Fr John Moffat SJ returning as Chaplain;

• four OWs of long service in Lourdes; and

• five pilgrims joining in a non-working capacity.

Throughout the last week of August, OWs in maroon polo shirts could be spotted volunteering across the Sanctuary and wider town – welcoming pilgrims to the baths; marshalling crowds at processions and services; supporting pilgrims in prayer at the grotto; cleaning windows in pilgrim accommodation; and lifting wheelchair users and those on stretchers on and off their trains at the station.

In some particularly precious moments, Andrew was invited to lead the Rosary at the grotto (twice!), and John’s training in the College Choir was put to good use as he led volunteers from across the world in a stirring rendition of Amazing Grace at the weekly volunteers’ Mass, for which he was roundly complimented and applauded.

As reported in September 2024 Edgeways, last year’s group walked to Bartrès – a town in the hills where St Bernadette lived immediately before the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to her in the Grotto at Massabielle in 1858. That pilgrimage was so spiritually fulfilling that it was reprised this year by popular demand, a fruitful collaboration between the College and the Italian scouts and friends that led last year’s walk. The group followed the route that St Bernadette would have walked, and were encouraged from the outset to rotate walking partners every few minutes in order to make new friends. In the presence of St Bernadette’s relics, Fr John celebrated a moving sung Mass in the town’s church, complete with an Italian translation of the homily.

As for the evenings, gatherings invariably began in the volunteers’ bar; its staff came to look forward to our arrival each night, and we began to transform the place into a lively, intergenerational dancefloor of international music for everyone to join in! We were always joined by our friends from all over the world – Italy, France, Spain, USA, Mexico, just to name a few countries – and as the week continued, we accumulated many more new friends.

Pilgrims were welcomed; fun was had; and once again, the Wimbledon College Lourdes Hospitalité served in Lourdes as men and women for others.

A version of this article was also published in the September 2025 issue of Edgeways, Sacred Heart Wimbledon’s parish magazine.

The reflections that follow are indebted to a talk by Sœur Carmen, a Franciscan sister in Bartrès, who kindly addressed our group in the church at Bartrès. A version of these reflections was also published in the September 2024 issue of Edgeways, Sacred Heart Wimbledon’s parish magazine.

Bartrès is a small hamlet an hour’s walk up the hills from Lourdes. With fewer than 600 inhabitants, it is very much a place of silence, and, after a busy day of service in the Sanctuary, we are drawn to reflect how Jesus, in his ministry, himself found refreshment from the prayerful silence of the mountains: ‘And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.’ (Matthew 14:23)

As we began our walk up to Bartrès, we paused at seven stations along the way to reflect on the seven virtues – prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and love – and ask which ones spoke most to us.

Bernadette’s life included two stays in Bartrès. The first stay began shortly after her birth in January 1844. A lesion left Bernadette’s mother, Louise, physically unable to breastfeed Bernadette, and so in November 1844, Bernadette was sent to Lourdes in the care of Marie Lagües, who would become her mère nourrice (wet nurse). Lagües was a customer of the Soubirous’ moulin, and she had recently lost a 13-day old child, so she fed Bernadette with the milk that would have been intended for her own. Lagües grew fond of Bernadette, and Bernadette stayed in Bartrès until April 1846, aged 2, when she returned to her family in Lourdes.

Lagües is buried in Bartrès’ churchyard. At her grave, we paused to pray for all mothers, especially those who, for whatever reason, have lost their children.

In September 1857, Bernadette’s family sent her back to Lagües’ care in Bartrès. She was in poor health, given her family’s pitiful living conditions in the tiny Cachot in Lourdes, and besides, sending Bernadette away gave the rest of the family one less mouth to feed.

Like many young girls her age, Bernadette became a shepherdess, caring for Lagües’ lambs in a bergerie on the hillslopes. The bergerie is still extant today. It is a powerful place of prayer, decorated inside with statues of Bernadette and sheep, and filled with rosaries and prayer intentions left by passing pilgrims. We climbed the narrow trail up to the bergerie, and spent time there in quiet reflection.

While in Bartrès, Bernadette eagerly enrolled in classes for her First Holy Communion. Though she made a great effort to learn, she was uneducated and self-admittedly ‘ignorant’; many doubted her ability ever to pass.

On 3 January 1858, the parish priest who was catechising Bernadette, Abbé Ader, left the parish to join a Benedictine monastery. Realising that she would not be able to complete her catechetical classes in Bartrès, Bernadette returned to Lourdes.

And there, on 11 February, the apparitions of Our Lady began. Through Lent and Easter 1858, in a series of 18 apparitions, Our Lady gave this insignificant peasant girl a divine course of catechism, and Bernadette received her First Holy Communion before the last apparition.

During our visit to Bartrès, we venerated a tablet on which Bernadette practised her handwriting; she signed it ‘December 1858’, after the apparitions, when she was finally deemed worthy of a proper education. As Our Lady proclaims in the Magnificat: ‘He casts the mighty from their thrones and raises the lowly.’ (Luke 1:52)

Sœur Carmen also exposed a second relic for us: a piece of Bernadette’s flesh, a rarity outside of Nevers.

We shared a lively meal outside the church, and, as dusk fell, we returned down the hills of Bartrès. Our retreat to the mountains was a moving opportunity to reflect on Christ’s special love for the poor and marginalised, and ask how the seven virtues on which we meditated during our walk up to Bartrès speak to us today.

Our centenary pilgrimage in 2023 was not only a success in its own right, but it seems to have proved the catalyst for something of a revival of the College Hospitalité. Three pilgrims from 2023 returned last year to do a stage for the first time. One of them brought his son and friend with them, so we had five first year stagiaires, more than we’ve had for many years! An added blessing was the return after too long of Fr John as our chaplain. We were also accompanied by a number of family members in a non-working capacity. Altogether, a large group, spanning different generations!

But the centenary effect has not stopped there. Sean and Matteo have done a remarkable job of recruiting new first years, with the result that eight College leavers have signed up for a stage this year. They will be joined by two young ladies, one of whom leaves the Ursulines this year and the other who left two years ago and a friend of one of last year’s first timers – so eleven in all.

Not only that, but all five of last year’s first-timers are returning for a second stage this year and will be joined by Jeremy, a stagiaire on the 2023 working party — and John is returning as chaplain. There is no non-working pilgrimage this year as such, but Gerry, a pilgrim from 2023, is coming to keep our working party company.

Just to mention also that, as well as the main working party, a number of College Hospitalité members served as usual in Lourdes at other times in 2024: Peter, Dulce Maria, and Mike in July; Mike again in August; Martin and Jonathan the week before the main party; and Peter, Kevin, and Ige in September.

Peter Chamberlain, Secretary

Main working party (22 to 30 August)

Our trip this year started at Stansted Airport on Thursday 22 August where we met to fly to Lourdes. Paddy, Andrew, and Zach all came on the Centenary Pilgrimage last year and were now going to do their first stage with the Hospitalité. Paddy’s son, Sean (then in Poetry), and an OW friend of Paddy’s, Paul, were also doing their first stage and we were very pleased to have Fr John with us for the first time since 2005.

Lesley, Alex, and Lourdes, and Paddy and Marie, were also on the trip to take part in the non-working party. It was not long before we were all in our various accommodation in Lourdes and walking the streets trying to find somewhere that would take twelve of us for a meal, which was not easy, as the few cafés and restaurants open were very busy! Martin and Jonathan were already in Lourdes, having done their first of two weeks stage the week before, and Christina and Matteo joined us the next day having travelled out separately. So there were 16 of us in total.

The next day, we booked in at the Hospitalité bureau (which only took just under 3 hours!) to be assigned our various jobs. The nouveaux and Fr John were put in Équipe 73, which had two very keen Italian scouts as their chefs. Their devotion to the role involved taking the group on several extra spiritual trips, notably walking to Bartrès and back one evening after duties and walking to the Camp des Jeunes late in the evening! Fr John (and sometimes Matteo) very ably translated the scouts’ Italian for the rest of our group. Matteo was at the airport for the second half of the week and Jonathan, Martin, and I were at the station.

We met up with the non-working party for Mass most days, this year in St Anne’s chapel in the Upper Basilica. We also managed a few Rosaries on the Prairie after supper and I joined the non-working party to do the stations of the cross as Équipe 73 did it as part of their stage.

We had a very enjoyable group meal on the Tuesday evening in the St Sauveur Hotel and were joined, as usual, by our old friend Pascal. Other notable events were that some of us went up to the old town on the Sunday to see the Olympic flame passing through the town and poor Lesley, Alex, and Lourdes had to be rescued coming down from a trip to the Pic du Jer when the funicular got stuck due to lightning!

The weather was generally good with the occasional thunderstorm and Lourdes was back to being very busy as it always was in that week before Covid. Also the station was busier than it has been since Covid.

All too soon we were leaving for the airport bus on Friday 30 August and returned to Stansted tired but very enthusiastic for next year.

Ed Hills, President

News from Lourdes: Piscines reopen for immersion

The COVID pandemic obviously put a stop to the practice of full immersion at the Piscines. It was replaced with a simpler ritual, the gesture of water, which sought to imitate the actions of Bernadette herself, who just washed her face and hands in the spring. This practice proved extremely popular: it was accessible; flexible in that individuals, families or groups could do it together with the minimum of formality; and it did not instil the fear and foreboding that immersion in cold water does in many people. In 2023, 430,000 pilgrims performed the gesture of water. It is clearly here to stay; the ceremony up to now has been performed in the Piscines, but there are plans to also make it available in other sites within the Sanctuary.

At the same time, it has always been the intention to reintroduce the option of full immersion when the time and circumstances were right — in fact, since the end of the pandemic, immersion has always been available on an exceptional basis, with the permission of the Rector. The years since the pandemic have been put to good use to plan for the reintroduction of full immersion at scale, examining the working practices and other measures necessary for it to conform to current standards of hygiene and safeguarding.

So it was that on 15 July 2024, after extensive changes including the installation of new filtration systems, the former men’s baths, five in total, opened for full immersion for all pilgrims. The women’s baths remain dedicated to the gesture of water. Immersions are currently limited to 100 (60 women 40 men) a day, the main constraints being the number of baths, the availability of single-use linen and, at times, the number of suitably experienced male and female hospitaliers. It is planned to increase capacity in 2025, by commissioning additional baths for immersion, for which work is currently in progress.

In 2024, 393,000 pilgrims made the gesture of water and, since its opening in July, 13,500 pilgrims have chosen full immersion. Going forward, pilgrims will now have the choice between the two means of making a sign of their faith in these unique ways.

Peter Chamberlain, Secretary

Some dates

Annual General Meeting: 7.30pm on Sunday 23 March, Sacred Heart Parish Lounge. Please bring finger-food to share and the bar will be open for drinks.

Main working party: Thursdays 21 to 28 August

Wimbledon College’s connection to Lourdes began in 1923, when Fr John Manning SJ led the first group of students there. After a 30-hour journey by train and ferry, the boys served as stretcherbearers or brancardiers, assisting pilgrims to and from Lourdes’ hospitals, baths, processions, and many bars and cafés. Every year since, a group of Old Wimbledonians has travelled to Lourdes to spend a week in service of Our Lady, a tradition interrupted only by the Second World War.

You might be surprised to learn that ‘Wimbledon’ is a hefty name in Lourdes’ volunteering community. In the Rosary Basilica, there is even a stone dedicated to the war dead of Sacred Heart Wimbledon and Wimbledon College. Our members – which include not just old boys, but families, friends, and former teachers – volunteer across Lourdes’ many services, from bathing pilgrims to training volunteers, and from assisting in hospitals to marshalling torchlight processions.

But ‘Wimbledon’ is particularly distinguished for its work at the station, where we help wheelchair users and pilgrims on stretchers on and off their trains. We are often the first smiles they see after their long journeys. A poem by one of our members immortalises our work at the station; a copy is given to every volunteer to remind them of the meaning of our service.

Read Jim Larner's poem

Last August 2023, we celebrated one hundred years of Wimbledon College in Lourdes with a special pilgrimage accompanied by former headmaster Fr Michael Holman SJ and joined by many veterans of our association. Reflecting on his first year in Lourdes, recent leaver Jeremy compared its spirit to a ‘ripple of love spreading far beyond the grotto’.

Lourdes is a thriving place of international friendship, where the poor, sick, and marginalised are exalted. As Fr Peter Griffiths SJ, one of our regular chaplains, reflected: ‘This is one of the few places in the world in which we can be certain that Heaven actually touches Earth: Our Lady’s footprints are on that grotto.’

May Lourdes’ story of faith, service, and community continue to inspire those who visit this sacred place, and generations of Wimbledon College to come.

Would you like to join us in Lourdes? This 23–27 August 2024, Fr Michael will accompany a non-volunteering pilgrimage, and you’re invited! For more information, contact wimbledonlourdes100@gmail.com.

A version of this post was printed in the May 2024 edition of Edgeways, the parish magazine of Sacred Heart Wimbledon, alongside a copy of Jim Larner’s poem. With thanks to David Hurst for his editorial expertise.

In 1923, Wimbledon College first sent to Lourdes a group of fourteen schoolboys, accompanied by the chaplain, Fr John Manning SJ. Since then, the College has sent a party to Lourdes to help the sick in nearly every subsequent year except for the years of World War II and its aftermath.

To celebrate the centenary of the first working party, we decided that we would have a special centenary pilgrimage in addition to the usual working party. In the end, there were nine members of the working party and nineteen members of the pilgrimage group. I reported at more length on the pilgrimage in the centenary newsletter. Suffice it to say that it was an unqualified success.

Read our centenary newsletter

This success was attributable to the inspiring leadership of Fr Michael Holman SJ assisted by Fr Peter Griffiths SJ, and, also, to the lively interaction between the disparate age groups. These ranged from the effervescent seven-year-old Lourdes to the sprightly octogenarians, Gerry and Bob.

Of course, the real reason why the pilgrimage was such a triumph was the presence of Our Lady and the overwhelming spiritual power of Lourdes. In this connection I was impressed by the impact made by Lourdes on two young men, Jeremy and Kavi. Jeremy left the College in 2023 and Kavi the year before. Their accounts are set out in full in the centenary newsletter, but I will quote a few extracts now from Jeremy’s.

Jeremy had never previously visited Lourdes. He explained that, initially, he was very apprehensive about his ability to help the sick. However, his anxieties fell away as he became part of a team whose sole purpose was to serve the sick. He writes of Lourdes that “no other place on earth is more focussed on the sick”. Jeremy intends to return and says: “The spirit of Lourdes will continue to spread its ripple of love far beyond the Grotto”.

The principal aim of the Wimbledon College Lourdes Fund is to provide financial help to enable current and former pupils of the College to go to Lourdes. The fund was established several years ago and is now almost exhausted. So far as I know, there has been no previous appeal for funds for several decades, so I would ask you please to be generous in your giving. I have quoted from Jeremy’s reminisces on his first visit to Lourdes in the hope that it might strike a chord in the memory of those who have visited Lourdes, perhaps many years ago!

Gifts can be made by bank transfer or posted cheque. For the details of either method, please email wimbledonlourdes100@gmail.com. We can also provide a receipt of your donation on request; please quote your name as reference on the bank transfer.

Thank you. Your generosity will help enable future students of the College to experience, like Jeremy and Kavi, the transforming action of Lourdes in their lives.

Edmund Hills
President, Wimbledon College Lourdes Hospitalité

View the video on Class of 55's website

A few clips in the video are particularly evocative: the ferry across the Channel, the afternoon procession of the Belgian coalminers, the abri in its unreconstructed state, and the daytrip to Gavarnie, which Fr Ignatius St Lawrence SJ insisted as a day’s break and retreat from our work in Lourdes.

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