The message of Lourdes crossed the Atlantic soon after the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to St. Bernadette.
In 1875, just 17 years after Bernadette’s first vision, seminarians at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, Maryland, began building a grotto inspired by Massabielle. Using local stone gathered by hand, they created a replica of the Massabielle Grotto, in Lourdes, completed and dedicated around 1878–1879.
It remains one of the oldest Massabielle Grotto replicas still standing in the United States.
The connection with the Sanctuary Our Lady Of Lourdes grew even stronger in 2007, when his Excellence Jacques Perrier, Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes brought a stone from Massabielle Grotto, place of the Apparitions in 1858 of Our Lady to Bernadette and placed it inside the Emmitsburg grotto, welcoming it amongst the Sanctuaries deeply in communion with Our Lady Of Lourdes.
Nearly 150 years after the seminarians first laid those stones, the story comes full circle. A Relic of St. Bernadette is now making its journey to America bringing Our Lady of Lourdes and Bernadette’s story closer to a new generation. | 
