Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,
Cork Independent, 19 September 2013
New Book – Journeys of Faith
Following on from last week’s article, to mark the 75th anniversary of the dedication of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Ballinlough, my new book, Journey’s of Faith celebrates its story. Ballinlough in the 1930s was a part of Blackrock parish. At the heart of Blackrock is St Michael’s Church. The first building was erected in 1821 and was a chapel of ease to the parochial chapel of St Finbarr, or the South Chapel. St Michael’s Parish was created in 1848. The original parish area comprised almost all of the Mahon Peninsula and included Blackrock, Ballintemple and Ballinlough.
Ballinlough was an area of hard-working people. Circa 55% of the land comprised market gardens. In the 1911 census, it had a population of just over 400 people with 17 families engaged in market gardening. This is a theme which is returned to in more detail in parts of this book through memories of interviewees. In his address to the congregation at the laying of the foundation stone in 1935 of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Ballinlough, Bishop Cohalan noted that, in his younger days, he remembered the district around Ballinlough Road and Boreenmanna Road as largely devoted to market gardening but it had grown into a popular residential area and the necessity for a church was “heavily” felt.
The 1930s coincided with an increase in veneration and celebration of Our Lady of Lourdes and created a framework of symbols for the new chapel of ease in Ballinlough. Our Lady of Lourdes is a title of the Blessed Virgin Mary cited by the Roman Catholic church in honour of the Marian apparitions which are said to have taken place before various individuals on separate occasions around Lourdes, France. Most prominently among these was the apparition on 11 February 1858, when Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old peasant girl, admitted to her mother that while gathering firewood with her sister and a friend, a “lady” spoke to her in the cave of Massabielle (a mile from the town). Similar appearances of the “lady” were reported on seventeen further occasions that year. In 1862, Pope Pius IX authorized Bishop Bertrand-Sévère Laurence to permit the veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Lourdes. In 1907, Pope Pius X introduced the feast of the apparition of the Immaculate Virgin of Lourdes. The first Official Irish Pilgrimage to Lourdes happened in September 1913. In later years on 6 June 1925, Pius XI actively furthered the venerations in Lourdes by beatifying Bernadette Soubirous.
The year 1933 coincided with the 75th anniversary of the 1858 apparitions and the anniversary celebrations at the shrine were duly reported upon across the world. The celebrations were enhanced at the end of the year on 8 December 1933 on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception when Pope Pius X canonized Bernadette and determined her feast day to be 16 April. This was followed in 1934 by a heavily publicised triduum of masses at Lourdes to celebrate Bernadette’s elevation to sainthood. These were held in conjunction with the extension of the holy year in honour of the 19th centenary of Christ’s crucifixion. This holy space of time was brought to a close at Lourdes on 25-28 April 1935 with more triduums of masses and other religious events. All of these events helped to boost pilgrimage traffic to Lourdes which by 1935 had reached 1.1 million per annum.
In Ireland, the response to the canonisation of Bernadette was enormous. For a considerable time in the mid 1930s, every weekly issue of The Irish Catholic newspaper contained a substantial article on the shrine, under the title “Notes from Lourdes”, in which pilgrimages were discussed. Through this source, one can read about the revamp of Ireland’s ‘Lourdes’ at Knock and about the numerous annual pilgrimages organised by a variety of Catholic bodies to Lourdes, France. By the mid 1930s, there were at least half a dozen big pilgrimages each having from 400 to 1,200 pilgrims and thousands of associate members furnishing support at home. Pilgrimage promoters and organisers also utilised lectures, slides, and film to attract recruits and spread interest. The film entitled Lourdes and St Bernadette, praised for its fine camera work, good acting and effective musical accompaniment, was originally sponsored by Irish missionaries. The Holy Ghost Fathers, whose principal work lay in Africa, arranged for its screening in Cork and other southern counties during the summer of 1935. Franz Werfel’s novel, The Song of Bernadette, also had great impact as well the subsequent film based on it. The novel was the number one best seller in Ireland from 1942 to 1946. Naming churches after Our Lady of Lourdes also became a common practice from 1930s onwards through to the Marian year of 1954 and into the 1960s. In Blackrock, Cork, Canon William Murphy was one of many priests who sought to remember the significance of the canonisation of Bernadette and hence named the new Ballinlough church after Our Lady of Lourdes. It became the first church to adopt the name in the south of Ireland.
Kieran’s new book, Journeys of Faith, Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Ballinlough, Celebrating 75 Years is available (E.15) from the church and its parish office.
More next week…
Caption:
709a. Aerial view of bell tower and Ballinlough Road from church roof of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Ballinlough, 2013 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
