At a recent Vatican Mass, Pope Benedict told the congregation to remember Lourdes, where flash floods had “inundated the grotto where the Madonna had appeared”.

One would have to be naive and credulous to believe that the Mother of God would appear, just like some pagan nymph or goddess, in a ‘grotto’ which is nothing more than a hole in a rock! And it is absurd to believe that the Mother of God would disregard the Vicar of Christ and his bishops in order to confide her messages to a peasant.

This, we are told, is what actually happened to a depressed, lonely peasant girl at Lourdes in 1858, and to illiterate peasants at Fatima, Ta’ Pinu and Guadeloupe. I almost forgot to mention Pope Benedict’s recent visit to Cuba, when we first heard of La Mambisa – also known as “La Cachita” – who appeared four hundred years ago to two fishermen and an African slave in Cuba!

John Guillaumier

ST JULIAN’S