Relics of St Bernadette Soubirous will embark on a tour of the United States beginning in mid-September in Washington, DC.
Dubbed “Journey of Grace”, the tour begins on September 18 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. From there, through December, the relics will go up and down the East Coast of the United States before finishing that leg of the journey in Florida.
Beginning in 2027, the relics will then head west, to what the organisers are calling the “Central South” portion of the tour. Organisers plan on visiting most of the 50 states and more than 200 venues during the year-long tour.
As a child, St Bernadette Soubirous experienced visions of the Virgin Mary in 1858 in Lourdes, France. She was canonised in 1933, 54 years after her death at the age of 35 from tuberculosis. Relics included on the tour include hair, portions of ribs and kneecaps. They are housed in a reliquary.
The relics last toured the United States in 2022, in a 119-day journey spanning 47 venues across 20 states, said a video explaining the 2026-2027 tour produced by the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.
That tour, said the sanctuary’s website, was “always meant as a first step – a modest test of the waters to see how America would respond to St Bernadette”. With no marketing and “not much advance plan”, that tour was far more successful than initially imagined, said the organisers.
“That response changed everything. It told us this couldn't stay a modest visit – it demanded a second tour built on an entirely different scale: one that reaches every diocese that wants her, not only the parishes a short timeline allowed; one built for lasting relationships, not a single stop; one that goes beyond parish doors entirely, onto campuses and into hospitals, for the people who never got the chance to meet her in 2022,” said the organisers.
Unlike in 2022, this second tour will see St Bernadette’s relics visiting college campuses and hospitals.
Visiting universities is important, said the organisers, “because the young adults filling those campuses today are the generation that will carry – or fail to carry – the Catholic faith forward, and a personal encounter with St Bernadette's witness speaks to them in a way a homily alone cannot.”
Aside from the first stop at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception – which is directly next to the campus of The Catholic University of America – there are stops planned for Villanova University, Seton Hall University, Yale University, Harvard University, Belmont Abbey and the Georgia Institute of Technology on the first leg of the tour.
Exact dates and locations for the tour are still being determined and will be announced in the coming months, said the organisers. Interested parishes are invited to inquire about bringing the relics to their area.
