Silk saris for women, dress shirts and trousers for men. This July morning, the splendor of the pilgrims in prayer facing the grotto of Lourdes (Hautes-Pyrénées) catches the eye. At the foot of the rock, priests from the Indian chaplaincy in Paris celebrate Marian, the Tamil first name of the Virgin, in front of a hundred faithful. “Mary occupies a very important place for us. We turn to her to access God”, confide Sandrine and Jean-Claude. The two thirty-somethings have gone on pilgrimage to Lourdes almost every summer since childhood. Catholics, they were born in France, but their families come from Pondicherry, a former French colony in southern India.
The sanctuary does not have figures on the presence of Tamil pilgrims, from the Sri Lankan and Indian diasporas of Europe or North America, but their presence is obvious. Father Linus Souza estimates them at 30,000 a year. A sign of the importance of the issue, this Sri Lankan chaplain settled in Lourdes seven years ago to devote himself to welcoming them and celebrates a daily mass in their language.
Two cities united by Mary
On the Indian subcontinent, the Marian cult is very much alive. Near Pondicherry, the basilica of Velankanni, Notre-Dame-de-la-Bonne-Santé, attracts millions of pilgrims. Through the Tamil faithful, an informal twinning, as close as it is intimate, has been established with Lourdes. “When they go back to India in the summer, the pilgrims pour in the water they bring back from here,” says Father Augustin, a trainee priest at the Indian chaplaincy in Paris. Their devotion sometimes baffles the regulars of the shrine. “Some people pray on their knees to the crowned Virgin up to the grotto,” notes Bishop Olivier Ribadeau Dumas. The rector recognizes this as a tradition of Velankanni, which he visited in the spring.
The attachment of Sri Lankan Tamils to the Marian city tells a story of exile. “Lourdes is a place where families dispersed by war meet”, testifies Myriam Touret. It’s hard not to notice the slim silhouette of this sixty-year-old, draped in sequined saris, who criss-crosses the sanctuary every day. In 1983, Sri Lankan and Catholic, Myriam came to implore the mother of Christ to help her obtain asylum, like many of her fellow citizens. “I promised him to come back if that was the case and I kept my word,” she smiles.
Retired, Myriam now packs her bags in Lourdes ten months a year. When she is not praying, she serves as a chaperone to the Hindus, who are said to constitute up to half of the Tamil visitors. Swiss of Sri Lankan origin, Nirooba Vajanthan is surveying the Marian city with his family for the second time. Her religion, polytheistic, in no way prevents her from feeling “great faith for the Virgin”: she is a maternal figure, sister of the Hindu goddesses associated with compassion, fertility or healing. Myriam approaches Nirooba as she heads for the Basilica of Saint Pius X and shows him how to ask for the priest’s blessing without communion, hands crossed on his shoulders.
This gesture, Uthaya Ainkaran also practices it on Sundays when she accompanies her daughter to mass. This smiling little woman runs the Madha restaurant with her husband, on the boulevard de la Grotte. Hindu, she naturally integrated Mary into her pantheon. The establishment serves Indo-Sri Lankan specialties under the protection of a Virgin with a neck adorned with flowers. Uthaya’s three children wished to convert to Catholicism. “Our parents accepted without problem, says Papisha, 15, the eldest daughter. Our life had started very badly. When my father arrived in France, he did not even have enough to buy a McDo! But the Virgin gave us gave a lot of grace. My parents are grateful to him.”
A local diaspora
Nearly ten years after their arrival, the family has opened two other addresses. A small local diaspora has formed in Lourdes to meet the demand of pilgrims. A dozen Tamil establishments now line the Boulevard de la Grotte. Manager of the Le Milan hotel, Vincent Luxman estimates the proportion of Tamils in his clientele at 30%. Originally from Jaffna, in the north of Sri Lanka, the 40-year-old waits, not without anguish, for a Sri Lankan chaplaincy in Germany to confirm the arrival of 50 people for August. It would be a breath of fresh air, as Lourdes struggles to recover from the health crisis. “We all took a big slap…”, he bellows. Ultimately, the authorities of the sanctuary dream that the middle classes of India and Sri Lanka, and not only the diasporas, will make the site a must on their trips to Europe.
A warm welcome
The Tamils settled in Lourdes year-round are already helping to revitalize the town. A Sri Lankan refugee, Yasinthan Nagarasa took over a store of religious objects in 2018. “I prefer to see curtains open than closed,” says Claudine Aubert. The president of the trade union of religious articles assures that the inhabitants of Lourdes reserve a warm welcome to the community. Granddaughter of Spanish immigrants who contributed to its growth, the shopkeeper considers that the presence of Tamils is part of the history of the city, that of an international city that knows how to enrich itself from others.