The Grotto — a Lourdes in Indiana, and the candles that arrive by mail

1896 – present · the pilgrimage ground behind the Basilica

The fame: Behind the Basilica, in a fieldstone cave built in the summer of 1896 over ground filled with the charred debris of the 1879 fire, stands a replica of the grotto at Lourdes — the campus marker gives it at one-seventh scale — built by the Rev. William Corby and dedicated on 5 August 1896. The Grotto's own literature records what happened next: it quickly became a pilgrimage site for American Catholics, and it has never stopped being one. The rosary is prayed there every day at 6:45 in the evening, rain or shine, on the university's own tour telling; students come during exam week; and the devotion has a measurable administrative footprint — Notre Dame Magazine records that people who cannot come write to the university asking that a candle be lit for them, that Brother James Lakofka, C.S.C., has fulfilled those mail requests since 1977, and that they total roughly ten thousand five hundred a year. A shrine whose candles arrive by post, ten thousand times a year, from people who will never stand in front of it: that is the fame, documented by the university's own magazine.

One night of the record: The Grotto's published histories also carry its one disaster: after the Michigan State football game in September 1985, visitors filled the racks and then the ground with burning candles — about fifteen hundred that weekend — and on the morning of Monday, 23 September 1985, the Grotto was engulfed in flames; the rocks and the statue were damaged, and the shrine reopened a week later, cleaned and inspected. The devotion that fills the racks is the same devotion that once nearly burned the shrine down; both facts stand in the Grotto's own record.

Cross-reference: The Grotto's building, Corby's correction of the Sorin attribution in the university's own archives, and Sorin's devotion that seeded it are the Notre Dame history's (University of Notre Dame, und-grotto); the Religion history carries the campus's devotional life in its frame. This entry carries the pilgrimage and its counts.

Sources

1. Notre Dame Magazine — "Grotto: You write, he lights": Brother James Lakofka, C.S.C., lighting candles on mailed request since 1977; roughly 10,500 requests annually.
2. University of Notre Dame, campus tour — the Grotto as a place of prayer at all hours; the daily rosary at 6:45 p.m.; the one-seventh-scale replica of Lourdes.
3. The Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes article and the Grotto's published literature (Dorothy V. Corson, A Cave of Candles) — a pilgrimage site for American Catholics soon after 1896; the fire of 23 September 1985, the roughly 1,500 candles of that weekend, and the reopening one week later.
4. The Notre Dame history in this record — Corby's building of 1896, the dedication of 5 August 1896, and the charred debris of 1879 beneath the filled ground.