Sunday, July 27, 2014

French Pilgrimage

Photo: Véronique Le Bagousse / Le Télégramme
On July 26th, 1914, Pope Pius X declared Saint Anne the patron saint of Brittany. 100 years on, around 20,000 pilgrims, including Princess Marie-Astrid and her husband Archduke Carl-Christian, gathered in Sainte-Anne-d'Auray in north-western France to mark the occasion.

The most notable feature of the village located about three miles from the town of Auray is a large basilica dedicated to Sainte-Anne d'Auray. The original chapel was destroyed during the 7th century and only rebuilt more than nine centuries later. One of the villagers is said to have had apparitions of Saint Anne commanding him to rebuild the chapel. After the apparitions became frequent and well-known throughout the entire region, the Bishop of Vannes allowed the chapel to be build.

Anne of Austria and Louis XIII enriched the sanctuary with many gifts, among them a relic of St. Anne brought from Jerusalem in the thirteenth century, and in 1641 the Queen obtained from the Pope the permission to erect a confraternity, which Pius IX raised to the rank of an archconfraternity in 1872. The first stone of the present day basilica was laid in 1866.


Source: Le Télégramme

1 comment:

  1. Can you imagine that dinner party? All the glitter, the stories those ladies could tell.

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