Bishop's Address

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.

Over the past 20 years the Lourdes Grotto at Carfin has been hugely transformed, not least with the addition of the chapel from the Flower Festival in Glasgow in 1987, when that chapel was acquired for £12,000 to become the Blessed Sacrament Chapel of the Grotto, where the Mass is celebrated each day from Mayl until early October at 1pm. The Blessed Sacrament is present for public adoration between 10.30 am and 8.00 pm on each day of that period.

Close to the Grotto, there is a new Pilgrimage Centre, with cafeteria and shopping facilities for the visitors. A hall will be built during the next year which will greatly enhance the facilities available to the parish and visitors to the Grotto.

The transformation of the Grotto will continue to be developed under Fr Thomas Millar. The new statue of Pope John Paul II is a significant new element to the attractiveness of the Grotto, not least as this is the first statue to honour our late Holy Father in any of the countries of the British Isles.

I have every confidence that the Lourdes Grotto in Carfin is a centre for the future in the faith development of the Catholic community in Scotland and in other parts of the United Kingdom.

I am happy to invite the Catholic community from both north and south of the border to pay a visit to Carfin, especially a year or so from now when the new parish centre will be built.

So I have no doubt that the Lourdes Grotto in Carfin will be a very important centre of prayer and worship for many years to come. The facilities on offer will not be bettered by anywhere else in the United Kingdom.

+ Joseph Devine
Bishop of Motherwell
1 June 2006