St. Bernadette’s Relics Visit Our Lady of the Rosary Monastery in Summit

Visitors to Summit’s Dominican Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary recently encountered a connection to one of Catholicism’s best-known pilgrimage sites, praying before relics of St. Bernadette Soubirous and washing their hands with water brought from Lourdes, France.

The monastery hosted the relics Oct. 6 as part of a national tour, with its chapel open for public veneration. The monastery’s announcement invited visitors to approach the reliquary, a container holding the relic, near the chapel’s communion rail.

Visitors prayed before the relics and washed their hands using water collected from the Lourdes spring, according to the Archdiocese of Newark.

St. Bernadette was 14 when she experienced 18 apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes. During one of these apparitions, Our Lady told Bernadette to dig in the mud at the Massabielle Grotto, where a spring emerged that continues to flow today. The Catholic Church has recognized 72 healings associated with Lourdes as miraculous. More than 7,000 other cases of healing have been reported.

Summit was one of four stops within the Archdiocese of Newark, along with Seton Hall University in South Orange, Our Lady of Lourdes Church in West Orange and the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark.

The national tour began Sept. 18 in Washington, D.C., and is scheduled to visit 140 locations through fall 2027 before returning to France. According to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, the tour aims to deepen the relationship between American Catholics and Our Lady of Lourdes.