A taste of Lourdes in Miami

By Emily Chaffins -

MIAMI | Tatiana Paolucci’s first pilgrimage to Lourdes, France, in 2019 left her yearning to return. The 19th century Marian apparition site, where Our Lady led 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous to the location of a miraculous spring, is visited by millions seeking healing. Like many, Paolucci “fell in love with Lourdes.” But then, on Jan. 5, 2020, Paolucci discovered she had leukemia.

After a two-and-a-half-year battle, Paolucci was thankful to be in remission in March 2022 and finally able to visit Lourdes again to serve the sick: “I told Our Lady of Lourdes that if she wants me to come every single year I will be there, because I gave my health to her and she helped me go through the very hard treatment.”

However, her leukemia caused a side effect: neuropathy. Dead nerve endings left Paolucci unable to feel sensations in her extremities. “You have to be careful when you walk,” Paolucci explained. “If you trip, you can break bones and never realize it.”

The neuropathy also caused chronic pain in her right heel – making the start of her third pilgrimage in June 2023 excruciating. On June 28, with seven days of service remaining, a discouraged Paolucci hobbled back to the hotel to rest.

Suddenly, she realized she was standing in front of St. Joseph’s Gate, an area of the sanctuary completely out of the way from her hotel. She headed in the direction of the hotel again, but a few moments later, she inexplicably found herself at the underground basilica.

Paolucci was dumbfounded. “At this point, I’m crying from pain,” she said, recalling her prayer, “well, you want me to be here, so I will be here.”

As a Eucharistic procession started, Paolucci sat, propping her leg up to avoid pressure on her heel.

When the priest brought the monstrance with the Eucharist in front of her, she prayed, “all I ask is to be able to finish what I started.”

Feeling more at peace, Paolucci decided to sit still after adoration until the area was emptier, to avoid “creating a show” because of her heel.

However, when she put weight on it, the pain had vanished.

She still remembers the shock: “I kept on stamping on my foot,” she chuckled. “I jumped like a little girl and started running back and forth between the benches. I was crying and crying… ‘I can finish, I can finish, I don’t have pain.’”

Now almost three years in cancer remission and remaining pain-free in her heel, Paolucci gives back in Miami by serving at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish’s annual Healing Mass and Gesture of Water, two events that celebrate the patroness’s feast day – which is also the World Day of the Sick.

The Healing Mass occurs on the feast day, Feb. 11 – although the parish also holds another Healing Mass every summer on the feast of the Assumption. Highlights include receiving the anointing of the sick before Communion, followed by a massive Lourdes candlelight procession.

Miami Auxiliary Bishop Enrique Delgado and 13 other priests celebrated the Healing Mass. More than 1,000 people attended, filling the parish hall and overflowing into the outdoor altar area.

Among the more than five other groups organizing the Healing Mass is the Hospitalité de Miami, affiliated with the Hospitalité Notre Dame de Lourdes since 2017. Established in 2016 by Archbishop Thomas Wenski, the Hospitalité de Miami hosts yearly pilgrimages to Lourdes, France – the same Paolucci attended. While hospitalités are more common in Europe, Hospitalité de Miami president Ernesto Medina noted they are “the only archdiocesan Hospitalité in the entire United States” and “represent more than 110 parishes throughout South Florida.”

Ana Maria Miller, English-to-Spanish interpreter for the Hospitalité’s September pilgrimages, remembers attending one of the first Miami Healing Masses in the mid-2010s. Her daughter – now Sister Marie Elizabeth of the Servants of the Pierced Hearts – was an altar server holding the oil of the sick.

Miller remembers her daughter “crying the whole time while the sacrament of the sick was going on.”

“I asked what happened, and she said she was crying because the faces of the people in need of healing were transformed after receiving the sacrament of the sick,” Miller said. “For me, that was a ‘wow’ moment.”

Throughout the day on Feb. 15, the parish hosted the Gesture of Water, manner in which pilgrims prayerfully wash in the miraculous spring in Lourdes, France, with Hospitalité de Miami servers guiding attendees through prayers. The servers also poured Lourdes water for attendees to drink and wash their hands and faces, just like at the apparition site.

The water comes directly from the Sanctuary of Lourdes, France, “comes by sea in huge containers,” Medina noted.

“The experience of the Gesture of Water, which we carry out in our parish twice a year, is, to our knowledge, the only one that is carried out outside the Sanctuary of Lourdes in the whole world,” said Medina. “This celebration of love began when we had the blessing of the relic of St. Bernadette April 2022, for the first time in the United States.”

“When we have the opportunity to serve those most in need, we can see with our own eyes the great need for healing that God's people have,” added Medina.