This year our Diocese will make it’s Centenary Pilgrimage to Lourdes.
Here is the story of our very first…
Many people who visit Lourdes on pilgrimage experience a deep spiritual healing and sense of peace. Perhaps that is the real miracle of Lourdes. But there have also been incidents of physical healing: Since the apparitions of 1858, Lourdes has dealt with more than 7,000 cases of unexplained cures.
72 of these have been medically verified as miraculous. These cures are rigorously vetted by the Lourdes Medical Bureau, requiring that these cures be sudden, complete, and unexplained by current science.
Roseanna Erskine recently contacted Pilgrimage Director, Father Shaun Purdy, about her grandfather, who went on the first pilgrimage in 1926. This is what she said:
“My grandfather Matthew Havelock was one of the sick, he was from Our Lady Immaculate Parish, Washington.
“His doctor wouldn’t sign for him for travel because of the gruelling journey. I think he was about 34 at the time. He suffered from TB and was so debilitated that he had to travel on a stretcher, which he did against his doctor’s wishes.
“My dad who was 9 at the time, was sure he would never see him again, a feeling shared by all. However, after his visit to the baths, he was so fit and well that he spent the rest of the time helping the sick.
“The family at home knew nothing until on his return they saw him arrive home and to quote my dad he ‘jumped over the garden gate’.
“I often wonder why this was not made more public, but I suppose we live in very different times. We have so many media outlets and everything is shared. My grandparents were very private people who would never seek publicity and there was a quiet, simple, acceptance and gratitude along with a deep faith.
“My granddad lived for another 25 years which he spent as a miner in the pits of Washington.”
In the photograph below:
Matthew Havelock (front row, far right), Bishop Joseph Thorman (centre), Fr Verling (far left).
The back of the photograph reads:
Matthew Havelock cured at Lourdes. Hopeless TB. After first visit to Baths 1926. Taken there on stretcher home doctor refused to give certificate of fitness to travel. Then after two days in Lourdes he helped to carry the sick to Grotto. Front row far right.
