Monastery of Dominican nuns at Lourdes

Posted in Diocese of Tarbes and Lourdes, Dominicans, Ecclesiastical province of Toulouse

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The history of our Monastery

A group of nuns from the Monastery of Mauléon (Basque Country) left for a fundation in Arles in 1878 at the request of a dominican tertiary. After ten difficult years came along another project through Sister Marie-Dominique Vivien de Joubert : the project of going to Lourdes. After a lot of investigation the nuns could purchase a property located on a hill overhanging the Gave, 600 m as the crow flies from the Grotto. In that place, it turned out possible to build a monastery in which we are dwelling since the year 1889.

The monastery today

We benefit from surroundings conducive to silence and contemplation and we offer opportunities to stay in our monastery for a period of retreat , ‘spiritual regeneration’, and family holydays. The Monastery of Dominican Nuns in Lourdes holds an accomodation capacity of 23 rooms, a dormitory for groups of youth, a conference room joining possibility of receiving organized retreats. We run a shop of monastic products in which we sell our own production of rosaries, decorated candles, hand-painted terracotta.

Some special features of our monastery

Being a dominican contemplative nun in Lourdes consists in making one’s own the Virgin Mary’s message to Bernadette : « Pray for the sinners », which echoes back to St Dominic’s prayer. Our life is given it’s rhythm by the alternation of pilgrimage season and off-season, and somehow by alternating speaking and silence. Word of God prayed in Church office, words exchanged during meetings at the parlour of the monastery, intercession prayers… silence of our contemplative life.

One of the main highlights in the year is, for us too, is the Rosary pilgrimage, on which the dominican family, all its branches gathered, get together in the service of sick persons and pilgrims from the whole France.