Bishop's Message

This is an article from Joseph Devine Bishop of Motherwell, in which he describes his feeling about Carfin and what it can offer us spiritually.

The Lourdes Grotto in Carfin was first established on a quite small site near to the parish church in Carfin in the early 1920's by the parish priest of that time. Fr Thomas Taylor, the priest who introduced St. Therese of Lisieux to the English speaking world with his little booklet, 'The Little Flower'.

Fr. Taylor extended the original dimensions of the Grotto to its present proportions, due to the help of unemployed men during the General Strike of 1925/1926. Those men gave of their services freely, their only reward being a bottle of beer or a few cigarettes. The new Grotto was officially opened by the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Bourne, in 1929. The puzzle here was why the Archbishop of Glasgow at that time was not available to do this.

The great years for the Grotto were in immediate post war years, when many thousands of people would come to Carfin and its grotto at weekends, many of those pilgrims being from diocese in the north of England, such as Hexham and Newcastle and Lancaster.