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Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes celebrated at the Seychelles Hospital |10 February 2023

Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes celebrated at the Seychelles Hospital

Father Yves Ngowegui-Mbenessesse conducting the service (Photo: Joena Meme)

Some patients and medical personnel gathered in the Seychelles Hospital grounds next to the grotto yesterday afternoon to take part in a one-hour religious service in celebration of the Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes, by the Roman Catholic Church.

When welcoming the attendees, Dr Anne Gabriel said it was a pleasure to be back after a three-year hiatus, since the mass, which was an annual event on the hospital calendar, had not taken place for three years.

The last service was in 2020, right before the Covid-19 outbreak.

Yesterday’s service was presided over by the hospital’s newly appointed chaplain, Father Yves Ngowegui-Mbenessesse, whose sermon focused on those who are sick, or were healing.

“We want you to know that you are not alone. We are with you always,” he said.

He also called on them to always see the good in themselves, despite being sick and to see their lives as a blessing instead of a curse.

“It is not because I am sick that I am no longer a blessing, I stop being good. Because God created us good,” said Father Yves.

Although the service was not well-attended, patients who could not join the congregation listened from their hospital windows, through the PA system which had been set up from the hospital grounds.

They later received communion from the hospital’s chaplain.

The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, which falls on February 11, celebrates the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, recalling a series of 18 appearances that the Blessed Virgin Mary made to a 14-year-old French peasant girl, Saint Bernadette Soubirous.

The Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes became worldwide in 1907. Lourdes has become a place of pilgrimage and healing, but even more of faith. Church authorities have recognised over 60 miraculous cures there.

 

Patsy Canaya

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