Marian Apparitions of France: A Pilgrim’s Guide

How the Church judges an apparition

Apparitions belong to private revelation, and no Catholic is obliged to believe in any of them, even one a bishop has recognized. A favorable judgment tells the faithful that the messages contain nothing contrary to faith or morals and that they may pray at the place with confidence.

The first judge is the local bishop, who names a commission, hears the seers and witnesses, and studies reported cures and the fruits of the devotion. Until 2024 a bishop could declare an apparition supernatural in origin, as the bishop of Tarbes did for Lourdes in 1862 and the bishop of Gap did for Le Laus in 2008.

On May 17, 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith published new norms for discerning alleged supernatural phenomena, approved by Pope Francis on May 4 and in force from Pentecost, May 19, 2024. As a rule, neither the bishop nor the Dicastery now declares an event supernatural. The bishop still investigates, with a commission that includes a theologian and a canonist, and his conclusion needs the Dicastery’s approval.

Six conclusions are possible. The most favorable, the nihil obstat, recognizes signs of the Holy Spirit at work and lets the bishop promote the devotion and its pilgrimages, though the Church does not certify that the events were supernatural. The other five, in rising order of caution, are prae oculis habeatur, curatur, sub mandato, prohibetur et obstruatur, and a declaration that the phenomenon is not supernatural.

Cotignac and Le Laus

The oldest of these apparitions took place in Provence. On August 10, 1519, Jean de la Baume, a young woodcutter, saw the Virgin holding the Child Jesus on Mont Verdaille above Cotignac. She asked for a chapel under the title Our Lady of Graces, to which the town would come in procession. He saw her again the next day, and the first stone was laid that September.

Cotignac rests on the approval of long tradition. Pope Leo X granted indulgences to its pilgrims in 1521, and Our Lady of Graces was crowned on August 7, 1938, but no canonical decree on the apparition itself is on record. In 1637 a Paris friar, Brother Fiacre, reported that Our Lady asked for novenas to Our Lady of Graces so that the queen would bear a son. Louis XIV was born in 1638 and came to Cotignac with his mother, Anne of Austria, on February 21, 1660, to give thanks. On June 7, 1660, a shepherd named Gaspard Ricard reported that Saint Joseph showed him a spring on Mont Bessillon, about two miles away.

The chapel of Our Lady fell into ruin after the Revolution and was restored in 1810. The Brothers of Saint John have kept it since 1981, and a community of sisters lives at Saint Joseph of Bessillon. A forest fire burned the hills around Cotignac in July 2026. Both shrines were spared, but check access on the shrine’s website before you go.

In May 1664 Benoîte Rencurel, a shepherdess of sixteen in what is now the diocese of Gap, began to see a Lady who sent her to an abandoned chapel at Le Laus and asked for a church there. The apparitions continued until Benoîte’s death in 1718, fifty-four years in all, while she ministered to the pilgrims and penitents who came. According to her account, the Lady promised that oil from the sanctuary lamp would heal the sick who used it with faith in her intercession.

The diocese of Embrun authorized the pilgrimage in September 1665. On May 4, 2008, Bishop Jean-Michel di Falco Léandri of Gap recognized the supernatural origin of the apparitions at a Mass in the basilica. Pope Benedict XVI declared Benoîte Venerable on April 3, 2009, and she is buried before the main altar.

The rue du Bac and La Salette

Saint Catherine Labouré, a novice of the Daughters of Charity on the rue du Bac in Paris, spoke with the Virgin in the chapel on the night of July 18, 1830. On November 27, 1830, she was shown the design of a medal. The first 1,500 medals were struck with the archbishop’s approval on June 30, 1832, and it is known today as the Miraculous Medal.

A canonical inquiry opened by Archbishop Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen of Paris in 1836 concluded that the medal was of supernatural origin, and in 1894 Pope Leo XIII approved its feast, kept on November 27. Pope Pius XII canonized Catherine on July 27, 1947. Her body lies in a glass reliquary in the chapel at 140 rue du Bac, which also holds relics of Saint Louise de Marillac and the heart of Saint Vincent de Paul.

On September 19, 1846, two young shepherds, Maximin Giraud, eleven, and Mélanie Calvat, fourteen, saw a Lady in light on a mountain pasture above La Salette, in the Alps of Isère, close to 6,000 feet up. She lamented the impiety of Christians and promised mercy if they amended. After five years of inquiry, Bishop Philibert de Bruillard of Grenoble declared in a pastoral letter dated September 19, 1851, that the apparition bore all the marks of truth, and he authorized its cult. The Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette, whom he founded in 1852, still receive pilgrims, and the shrine has its own hotel.

Lourdes

Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, Bernadette Soubirous saw the Lady eighteen times at the grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes. On February 25 the Lady told her to drink at the spring, still the center of the pilgrimage, and on March 25 she gave her name in Occitan, “Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou,” which means “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

Bishop Bertrand-Sévère Laurence of Tarbes set up a commission in 1858, and in his pastoral letter of January 18, 1862, he declared that the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, had really appeared to Bernadette. Saint Bernadette entered the Sisters of Nevers in 1866 and died at their convent of Saint-Gildard on April 16, 1879. Pope Pius XI canonized her on December 8, 1933, and her body is kept at Saint-Gildard.

Pontmain and Pellevoisin

On the evening of January 17, 1871, with the Prussian army close to Laval, Eugène and Joseph Barbedette, aged twelve and ten, saw a Lady in the sky above their village of Pontmain. Other children saw her too, for about three hours, and a message asked them to pray. Bishop Casimir Wicart of Laval recognized the apparition in a pastoral letter of February 2, 1872, and approved the cult of Our Lady of Hope. The church was made a minor basilica in 1905.

Estelle Faguette, a servant of thirty-two, was gravely ill when she wrote to the Virgin asking to be healed. Between February 14 and December 8, 1876, she saw Our Lady fifteen times at Pellevoisin, in the archdiocese of Bourges, and was cured by the fifth apparition. Our Lady asked her to spread a scapular bearing the Heart of Christ.

The archbishop of Bourges recognized her cure as miraculous on September 8, 1983, while the apparitions remained without official recognition. On August 22, 2024, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, with Pope Francis’s approval, authorized the nihil obstat, and on August 30 Archbishop Jérôme Beau of Bourges issued the decree authorizing devotion to Our Lady of Mercy at Pellevoisin. The faithful may give it their prudent adherence. Estelle died in 1929, and her cause for beatification opened in 2020.

L’Île-Bouchard

From December 8 to 14, 1947, four girls aged seven to twelve reported seeing the Virgin, with the archangel Gabriel, in the church of Saint-Gilles at L’Île-Bouchard, in the archdiocese of Tours. The Lady asked the children to pray for France.

In 1997 Archbishop Michel Moutel of Tours stated that the Church did not consider itself able to guarantee the supernatural character of the events. On December 8, 2001, Archbishop André Vingt-Trois issued a decree authorizing pilgrimages and public worship at Saint-Gilles under the title Our Lady of Prayer, without ruling on whether the apparitions were supernatural. Members of the Emmanuel Community have received pilgrims since 1999, and the pilgrimage is held each December 8.

The shrines on our ways

Via Immaculatae, ten days long, follows these apparitions across France. It begins in Paris, home of the rue du Bac chapel, and continues to L’Île-Bouchard, Pellevoisin and Nevers, where Saint Bernadette’s body lies. It then crosses to the Alps for La Salette and Le Laus, goes down to Cotignac, and ends at Lourdes after a stop at the monastery of Notre-Dame de Prouilhe.

Via Gratiae, the thirteen-day way of the great shrines of France, also runs from Paris to Lourdes by way of Nevers. Pontmain is the one apparition in this guide that none of our ways visits. Pilgrimage dates and Mass times change from year to year, and each shrine publishes them on its own website.

Our ways that go there

• Via ImmaculataeThe Way of the Immaculate, ten days
• Via GratiaeThe Great Shrines of France, thirteen days

Holy places: Paris, L’Île-Bouchard, Pellevoisin, Nevers, La Salette, Le Laus, Cotignac, Lourdes. Saints: Saint Catherine Labouré, Saint Bernadette Soubirous, Saint Vincent de Paul.