Ornate Wooden Crucifix from the Sanctuary of Lourdes. Depicts Jesus being crucified. Label on the back indicates it is a souvenir. 

Size: 12 x 7 x 2 in. 

#7753 . 

Lourdes is a market town situated in the Pyrenees, part of the Occitanie region in southwestern France. Prior to the 19th Century, the town was best known for its Château fort, a fortified castle that rises up from a rocky escarpment at its center. In 1858 Lourdes rose to prominence in France and abroad due to the Marian apparitions to the peasant girl Bernadette Soubirous (who was later canonized for her virtuous life). Shortly thereafter, the city and its Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes became one of the world’s most important sites of Catholic pilgrimage and religious tourism. Even into the 21st Century, from March to October the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is a place of yearly mass pilgrimage from Europe and other parts of the world. The spring water from the grotto is believed by some Catholics to possess healing properties. An estimated 200 million people have visited the shrine since 1860, and the Roman Catholic Church has officially recognized 69 healings considered miraculous. Cures are examined using Church criteria for authenticity and authentic miracle healing with no physical or psychological basis other than the healing power of the water, often from consuming or bathing in the Lourdes water which wells out of the Grotto. At the time of the apparitions, the grotto was on common land which was used by the villagers variously for pasturing animals and collecting firewood, and it possessed a reputation for being an unpleasant place. A giftshop now takes up a substantial area around the holy site, where thousands of crosses, crucifixes, images of Mary and Bernadette, and other religious souvenirs can be purchased to commemorate the importance of the pilgrimage.