Every year, 6 million people make a pilgrimage to a rural town in southwestern France. Up to 25,000 people visit daily during peak season. Those with both obvious and hidden illness come from all over the world in hopes of healing in the Pyrenees.
Lourdes, town in this country, is home to a cave with a natural spring of what’s believed to be healing waters. The Virgin Mary was said to have appeared to a young girl in the cave in 1858. Today, 160 years later, 350,000 people bathe in the waters every year, 7,000 people have asked the Catholic Church to confirm their healings as a miracle, and 69 miraculous healings have been authenticated by the church.
The latest report by Pioneers, a missions agency operating across Europe, reveals that some evangelicals are warning that at the site, many are revering the Virgin Mary more than Jesus Christ.
The one and only Pioneers missionary there said, “In my town Mary takes Jesus’ place on the cross. People come from far and wide to bring honor to her, to ask her for healing, to pray to her.”
“This is all the locals of this rural town in the mountains know: not Jesus, just millions of Catholic pilgrims from the whole world with their Mary statues, rosaries, and holy water. What should church look like for people who have been completely desensitized to the Gospel?” he added.
The missions agency said that they’re looking to renovate a cafe in the center of Lourdes as a way to offer visitors who come for Mary an encounter with Jesus instead. They say that they are hoping that “those who seek the healing of a physical infirmity, would instead receive restoration for their souls.”
“The cafe would shine the true Light and welcome visitors to ponder Him who really heals. It would be a place where what has been used for harm is redeemed—a place where those who expect to meet Mary, instead have an encounter Jesus Christ who is, in fact, alive. A place where those who seek the healing of a physical infirmity, would instead receive restoration for their souls.,” the mission agency wrote.
By UG Christian News Correspondent.
