Bishop Olivier Ribadeau

Interview conducted by Jean-Charles Putzolu – Lourdes, France

Bishop Olivier Ribadeau-Dumas follows two missions of “resurrection”. This is the term he uses to comment on his appointment in the French capital as rector of Notre-Dame de Paris. In Lourdes, he leaves to his successor Father Michel Daubanes a sanctuary still convalescing, at the end of the pandemic, where pilgrims are gradually returning. A few days from leaving the Pyrenees, assessment of his three heavy years.

You are living the last weeks of your mission at the sanctuary of Lourdes where you spent three years. A period complicated by the pandemic, which upset your mission, having had to take a different path from the idea you had at the start…

The years that I have just lived have been beautiful, dense and at the same time quite difficult. But first, I want to emphasize how being rector of a sanctuary like that of Our Lady of Lourdes is a tremendous opportunity for a priest. An inestimable grace is experienced here, that of the encounter with Bernadette and that of a possible encounter with God through Mary. All the ordinary of the center of the sanctuary, this fraternity lived in action, this primacy given to the smallest and most fragile, this welcome from all, this popular piety too, and the international dimension, all this has nourished these three years. It’s true, they were marked by the pandemic and in particular by the closure of the sanctuary, which had never happened in its history, for two months, between March and May 2020.

At the same time, it seems to me that these three years have been years of deep questioning about the way of carrying out our mission, about the pilgrims who come to Lourdes and about what it is necessary to undertake for us to be faithful today and tomorrow, in the next ten years, to the mission that the Church entrusts to us. It was a period of very great creativity, of very great solidarity between all the actors, whether chaplains, priests or religious serving the sanctuary, employees, volunteers, hospitallers; and at the same time, a necessary inventiveness so that the pilgrims who could not come can still benefit from this grace of Lourdes, because it is for me a deep conviction, the grace of Lourdes cannot be confined to inside the gates of the sanctuary. This is why we wanted to develop everything related to the retransmission by television, by social networks, of the main celebrations that took place in Lourdes. We created the Our Lady of Lourdes missions to enable dioceses to benefit from what is happening here thanks to the arrival of chaplains for two days or a week who allow the visit of the sick, the organization of processions, meditation on the rosary, Marian catecheses. So that what is lived in Lourdes can also be lived outside and makes those who are outside want to come back to the sanctuary. We are at this period when the pilgrims return, I hope more and more numerous.

You mention this period during which you developed retransmissions. Usually, pilgrims come to Lourdes, this time Lourdes came to the pilgrims.

That was indeed the goal: not to deprive the pilgrims of Lourdes. This crisis has made us aware of the extremely large number of individual pilgrims who come, without really being aware of what this place represents.

The secularization of our Western societies means that Lourdes is gradually emerging from the collective unconscious. Thereby, “move towards” is this movement that we have rediscovered of going to meet these people who enter the sanctuary to explain to them what it is and to allow them to enter into the grace of this place. Traditional pilgrimages that come for three or four days are not comparable to individual pilgrims who come for three or four hours. It has been a profound renewal of our pastoral work, not simply to welcome pilgrimages, but to meet pilgrims and visitors to enable them to live here for the few hours they will spend in the sanctuary, a real spiritual experience.

What fruits have you drawn from this three-year experience, on a personal level?

It’s a wonderful experience. It is a deep spiritual experience. No one emerges unscathed from contact with Lourdes. It is first of all the encounter with Mary, and this deep conviction that the Church will be faithful to her mission only if she becomes more and more Marian. That is to say, if like Mary, she listens to her Lord and listens to the men and women of our time; if she hastens, like Mary, to go in joy to the service of her cousin Elisabeth, and therefore that we hasten in joy to serve those who need us; if she is attentive, like Mary, to the needs of others, as she was attentive at Cana; and if it is at the foot of the Cross. This contact with Mary was a strong ecclesial experience. It is also the experience of prayer. The confinement allowed the chaplains to rediscover that their primary mission is to pray at the grotto. We are praying to bring before Mary this suffering world. And I think that in the simplicity of this place, prayer has no doubt also been simplified: it has become more trusting, simpler. But at the same time, in wonder and thanksgiving for all the testimonies that I have been able to witness over all these years, of the simple and so beautiful faith, of the people who are there and who have total trust in Mary. And then, there is a very important lesson: the poor, the fragile, the precarious are in the first place in Lourdes. I think Bernadette has a lot to say today, Bernadette has a lot to say to the priest. It was a poor woman who gave Father Dominique Peyramale, the parish priest of Lourdes, his mission. And so Father Peyramale put himself at the service of the mission that Bernadette herself had received from the Virgin Mary: “Go and tell the priests to build a chapel here and come in procession”. And so, I believe that even for me, a priest, I receive from the poor this mission of bringing the good news of the Gospel.

You leave the shrine to Father Michel Daubanes in a few weeks, when pilgrimages start up again – at only 50% of the usual attendance at this time. What message are you sending him?

First of all my joy that he arrives here in Lourdes and that one can only be a rector of the sanctuary if one is first of all a pilgrim and if one does not get used to the grotto. To always be amazed by what is experienced there, to draw confidence from this cave for this mission, which is a heavy and exciting mission. Father Daubanes will be able, like me, to rely on formidable teams, on the chaplains who are the heart and the soul of the sanctuary, because it is they who animate, who give the soul of this sanctuary; on a community of work, and it is not nothing that all those who work in Lourdes, whether they are employees, whether they are volunteers, who are religious, form a community. They are not juxtaposed chapels. I salute each other’s spirit of service and their great devotion and love for the sanctuary. This community of work is a point of support on which Father Daubanes will be able to lean. The rector of Lourdes is also a man of communion between all the actors, of communion with the directors of pilgrimages, with the presidents of hospitality in all the countries of the world, and it is our mission to build bridges. Building bridges also with a city, because the sanctuary is at the heart of this city, the city of Lourdes, which has suffered a lot in the past two years but which at the same time lives through the sanctuary and with the sanctuary. The rector is responsible for maintaining links with elected officials as well as with socio-professionals, hoteliers, shopkeepers and with the public authorities. It’s not always easy, sometimes a little tense, but I’m sure that communion always outweighs the risks of disunity and it’s when we are united that we can make things happen. It was in any case my desire during these three years. I may not have always succeeded, but I tried and I wish Father Daubanes could continue.

You said while greeting the journalists of these days Saint François de Sales, that in Lourdes one must live and see Christ at the height of an armchair. Your new mission will bring you back to the capital, to Paris, where you will be rector of Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral. Will you keep this chair-height look?

What is certain is that the mission that I will have will invite me to be attentive to everyone, to remain a man of communion in order to carry out a work in common with all the actors who are responsible for this vast project of Our- Lady of Paris. At the same time, we are always marked by the smallest and the weakest. So I’m going to be rector of the cathedral which is the bishop’s church; and the archbishop in processions is the one who always walks behind and if he walks behind, it is so as not to walk faster than the one who goes the slowest. And so I will have the concern to allow everyone to go at their own speed, as Christ joined the pilgrims of Emmaus, where they were on their way, on their way, to respect the little ones and the poorest and to ensure that everyone can find their way and have a role. A project like this is built with everyone, and everyone has a role to play.

You are leaving pilgrims wounded by life. You will find a cathedral injured by a fire with the hope of reconstruction.

I leave pilgrims wounded by life but confident in the Virgin Mary. I find Notre-Dame de Paris with immense joy since it is my diocese, and in this great hope of the resurrection. The cathedral will rise again, the cathedral will reopen, the cathedral will once again be this sign planted in the heart of our city, Paris, of our diocese, but also in the heart of the universal Church. Because the dimension of Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral goes far beyond the borders of the diocese. The emotion aroused by the fire shows that the whole world has its eyes turned towards Notre-Dame and that the reopening of the cathedral will be an appointment for the whole world. I hope that the Archbishop of Paris can reopen this cathedral with the public authorities in this concern that it be a crazy sign of hope. The Church lives, the Church is made of living stones. This cathedral, which is the genius of man, is the very sign that tradition is not set in stone, that the Church is still alive and that she is still responsible for announcing the Gospel of Christ.