Liverpool’s proud Lourdes landmark

by Simon Hart

‘This was the first time there was a diocesan pilgrimage. There were people who’d gone before but they were individuals and different parish groups so 1923 was the first time a diocese went with an archbishop.’

The words belong to Monsignor Des Seddon, director of the Liverpool Archdiocesan Pilgrimage to Lourdes, and the pioneering English diocese he is discussing is our own.

It was 100 years ago last month that Liverpool’s first official pilgrimage to

Lourdes took place, led by Archbishop Frederick Keating.

The centenary was marked in several ways during this year’s pilgrimage, which will be covered in our September issue. It was certainly fitting that the 2023 dates (21-28 July) should have mirrored almost exactly those of the inaugural pilgrimage, held between 20 and 28 July 1923.

Termed the ‘Lancashire Pilgrimage to Lourdes’ and staged 65 years after Our Lady’s apparitions to Saint Bernadette, it began with trains setting out from Lime

1982 Pilgrimage

Street, Preston and Chorley on the long journey to Newhaven, the Sussex port from which the pilgrims took a steamboat bound for Dieppe. While there was a Lancastrian contingent, all but 210 of the 1,390 pilgrims came from this Archdiocese.

By the time of their return, the name of a single sick pilgrim, Jack Traynor, was on many lips after word spread of a Liverpool man coming home cured of the injuries sustained in World War One that had left him partially paralysed. ‘In 1926, the Lourdes medical bureau declared that “this extraordinary cure is absolutely above and beyond the powers of nature”,’ explains Mgr Des.

For the 1924 pilgrimage, the number of pilgrims had risen to 1,500 – among them Traynor, now travelling as a helper. By 1927 the Liverpool Hospitalite – an official organisation for brancardiers

(stretcher-bearers) and handmaids –had been founded in St John’s Parish, Kirkdale.

‘A real sense of belonging’

Spool forward a century, and Lourdes is still drawing pilgrims from our diocese today. Father Grant Maddock, whose first pilgrimage was in 1988, is not surprised. ‘It’s a little microcosm of what the Church should be and what society could be,’

SNAPSHOT: Lourdes in the 50s

‘This photo was taken on the bridge over the river near the Notre Dame des Sept Douleurs hospital. I am the little girl in my First Communion dress and I am with my mother, sister, cousin and aunts. Some are in their handmaid uniforms as they had just finished a shift in the hospital, helping in the refectory and doing the laundry and making beds.’

Therese Newton, Holy Family, Southport

SNAPSHOT: A marriage made in Lourdes

The 2019 pilgrimage was a life-changing experience for Clive Baines who travelled as an assisted pilgrim and returned home having met his wife-to-be. As he relates: ‘I was not intending to meet my future wife but God, through Our Lady of Lourdes, had other plans. I met Sheila in the lobby of the Hotel Solitude, where we were both staying.’ For Sheila herself it was just as improbable an outcome after several years of poor health and personal problems, and the recent loss of her mother.

‘My dear mum had encouraged me to travel to Lourdes,’ she explains. ‘Mum died in June, just six weeks before the pilgrimage, so I was in a state of shock and grief, and meeting a husband was definitely not on the agenda! Clive and I were finally married at St Patrick’s Church, Southport, on 28 April this year – so thank you to Our Lady of Lourdes.’ he reflects. ‘You meet people and see them with our Liverpool badge or lanyard and there’s always a smile, always that encouragement and a real sense of belonging.’

Speaking on his arrival in Lourdes for this year’s pilgrimage, Fr Grant highlighted the excitement of the Welcome Mass which marks the start of each Liverpool pilgrimage. ‘Seeing that sense of joy and anticipation, seeing people together for the first time with one ultimate aim, which is to bring our assisted pilgrims and present them to the Lord through Mary’s prayer,’ he says.

This sense of togetherness has endured since that very first pilgrimage when ‘Faith of Our Fathers’ was sung at Lime Street before departure.

Much else has changed, of course, and it is fascinating to chart the evolution of the Archdiocesan pilgrimage. Monsignor John Butchard, who has been on every Liverpool pilgrimage since 1968, is as good as guide as anybody.

1923 – The miracle of Jack Traynor

The most remarkable story from any Liverpool pilgrimage belongs to the very first – namely the tale of Jack Traynor, a World War One veteran left partially paralysed and stricken by epilepsy after being struck by machinegun fire in the Gallipoli landings. He had spent five years in hospitals between 1915 and 1920, and was initially denied a medical certificate to go on the pilgrimage.

To quote Fr Patrick O’Connor’s description in ‘Liverpool’s Miracle Man’, a CTS booklet, Traynor ‘was unable to walk or even stand, he was having frequent epileptic fits, he had three open wounds (one of them in his head) and he had no power of feeling or movement in his torn and shrivelled right arm.’

Remembering his early journeys, he says: ‘You went to Lime Street station and boarded one of two special trains which were on platforms 7 and 8, where the London trains still leave from.

‘There were special ambulance carriages on the English train left over from wartime into which people in wheelchairs and on stretchers could be loaded.’ After a ferry crossing of the Channel, another train took pilgrims down to southwestern France.

For Mgr John, pilgrimage director for 25 years until 2016, transport was typically the biggest source of anxiety. ‘The challenges have nearly always been how to get to and from Lourdes. You had a trauma every year – such as a rail strike in France or a dock strike in Calais.’

By the late 90s, the Liverpool pilgrims lost the use of a train for the English leg of their journey meaning the trip down to the Channel ‘involved coaches, which was a nightmare’. Before long, there was no train on the French side either

In Lourdes, Traynor’s fits continued yet he was ‘bathed no less than nine times’ and on the afternoon of 25 July in the baths, his ”paralysed legs began to kick about violently”. That same afternoon during the Blessed Sacrament Procession, the Archbishop of Rheims made the Sign of the Cross above him with the Monstrance and, in Traynor’s words, ‘my right arm, which had been dead since 1915, suddenly shot out’ as he blessed himself.

Both incidents were initially regarded as epileptic fits but not for long. The account continues: ‘Jack was examined by both the three pilgrimage doctors (Drs Azurdia, Finn and Marley) and by a team of doctors of all nationalities at the Medical Bureau in Lourdes. They all agreed that he was no longer paralysed in the lower part of his body, that although the muscles on the right side of his chest had been destroyed he was now able to use his right hand and arm [and] was now completely free from epileptic fits.’ as air travel took over. ‘The relationship between the Liverpool pilgrimage and the Friends of John Lennon Airport has been very fruitful,’ notes Mgr John.

Thousands turned up at Lime Street to see Traynor on his return and he would go back Lourdes for many years afterwards, serving as a brancardier with the pilgrimage.

Other changes have occurred in Lourdes itself. The hospital which has traditionally housed Liverpool’s assisted pilgrims , the Accueil Marie Saint-Frai, was rebuilt in the mid-90s. It meant a sad adieu to the old open courtyard which was such a popular gathering point.

However, Mgr John explains: ‘The care we can give our assisted pilgrims is much greater now. The old St Frai was wonderfully welcoming but they squeezed in as many as they could. Literally there was just room to stand up between the beds.’

With advances in medical care, meanwhile, a good portion of assisted pilgrims who in the past would have required hospital care are able to stay in hotels with friends and family.

Music and youth

Another major piece of today’s pilgrimage is the Liverpool Archdiocese Youth Service. This came into being in the mid-70s, established by Fr Pat Harnett. Their involvement in the pilgrimage began soon after.

Mgr John explains: ‘One year we were short of fit, young brancardiers and Fr John Magee, then director of the pilgrimage, said, “How about some young people coming to supplement with their youth and vitality the efforts of the older people in pulling wheelchairs?” That was the beginning. And it grew and grew.

‘At first they kept to themselves and just appeared when we needed help with wheelchairs but now the integration between all sections of the pilgrimage is a joy to behold.’

The late 70s brought the addition of another piece of the jigsaw, the Lourdes music group, which had begun life as a parish group at St William of York in Thornton. The group would play at Speke airport on the day Pope John Paul II flew into Liverpool in 1982.

Mgr Des says: ‘There was a nice mix of traditional and modern folk music and it brought a different sense to the celebrations. Assisted pilgrims tell us the music makes a big difference to them.’

Fr Grant has music director on a Lourdes CV which also includes Liverpool Youth pilgrim and brancardier. He is keen to underline how his early pilgrimages helped nurture his calling to the priesthood. ‘It affected my vocation and focused it more because it gave me a different way of being able to pray.

‘It opened my eyes to seeing that Church wasn’t about what happened in the building but what happened in life and how we reflect Christ in our actions and words. That is where we really encounter Jesus in one another.’

These reflections resonate with Pat Murphy, a member of Liverpool Hospitalite whose family connections to Lourdes date back to the late 1940s. ‘A lot of friendships have been made in Lourdes, a lot of marriages have come out of Lourdes too – on the youth coaches, in the Hospitalite team. And a lot of vocations too.’

She goes on: ‘I remember hearing one of the Hospitalite team saying, “I need this week every year just to regroup as my prayer life is getting quite dry. I need to come here”.’

And they keep on coming. If his chief concern as pilgrimage director today is the cost involved for pilgrims, Mgr Des is encouraged by the presence in Lourdes this year of 50 new Hospitalite members. Or hospitaliers as they are now known after the roles of brancardiers and handmaids became integrated.

‘It’s very heartening that people still want to be helpers in Lourdes,’ says Mgr Des of the enduring pull of this centuryold pilgrimage. There really must be something in the water.