Word: grottos
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Blessed Candy. Even the waters that flow from taps in the Grotto are exploited. "Go drink at the fountain and there wash yourself," Bernadette is said to have admonished after reporting that the Virgin had appeared to her in the Grotto. Merchants have not forgotten a word of it: they sell plastic bottles artfully shaped like Bernadette or the Virgin for carrying off the water, Bernadette-imprinted soap for washing in it. Other "water" items: perfume, throat lozenges, cakes and candy advertised as "made from water blessed by the Holy Father." One ad agency is talking of hiring an airplane...
Ever since his installation in 1947, Bishop Pierre Marie Théas of Tarbes and Lourdes has battled Lourdes' trashy commercialism. "I am not the bishop of Babylon," he said. He removed hundreds of crutches that once littered the Grotto and restored much of the cave's original rocky austerity. Last week Bishop Theas struck hard at the exploiters of the Grotto's waters. His edict: "In no manner must it be commercialized. The Grotto water is foredestined to be drunk and to be washed in. It can be so used at Lourdes or at home...
...aides traveled thousands of miles through Brazil's back country; they studied 2,000 bat colonies, marked thousands of bats with dyes to learn their habits. They clocked the bats' flight (33 m.p.h.), and studied how bats find their victims by echolocation. Dr. Ruschi built a bat grotto at his museum to observe at close range their living, biting and eating habits. He determined that it takes 5,000 cattle to support an average colony of 50,000 vampire bats...
Loyalties & Lozenges. The motive for all this activity is not entirely religious. Lourdes is a city of shops-some 400, most of them crammed with cheap religious souvenirs: bottles for carrying water from the grotto, alarm clocks that tinkle Ave Maria, cellophane bags of throat lozenges made from "Genuine Lourdes Water." The names on the shop fronts are aimed at special loyalties: "The Infant Jesus of Prague," "St. Laurence O'Toole" (proprietors Walsh & Douly). These highly competitive private enterprises have helped the city to an estimated income of 10 billion francs (almost $24 million) a year, a figure that...
...commercialism stops at the gate to the grounds surrounding the grotto and basilica. Nothing is sold inside except candles; visitors must dress as they would in church. Under the present Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, Pierre-Marie Théas, the grotto has regained much of its 'original rustic simplicity; he replaced the ornate altar with a simple stone slab, took down the iron grille that used to stretch across the front of the cave, removed all but a few of the hundreds of crutches and orthopedic braces left behind by sufferers who found relief at Lourdes...