Lourdes Pilgrimages

Every year Portsmouth Abbey School students have the opportunity, through two programs, to travel to Lourdes, France, to volunteer in helping the pilgrims benefit fully from their time in this historic and holy place. The students get a chance to savor the day-to-day life of the town and enjoy their own spiritual retreat.

The family of our own Dom Joseph Byron, O.S.B., are the generous benefactors of the second pilgrimage, in which another group of Portsmouth Abbey School students travel, work and pray with students from Canterbury School (CT) and members of the Knights of Malta.

Every year the volunteer activities change, and so the experience is a very individual one, varying from year to year, pilgrimage to pilgrimage, and person to person. This means meeting pilgrims at the train station, helping them into rickshaws and seeing them safely on their way.

Ampleforth Abbey

Primarily through the generosity of Hugh Markey '40, small groups of Portsmouth students have taken part in a week-long, all-expenses-paid pilgrimage to Lourdes for nearly 30 years.  This trip is conducted with Ampleforth Abbey in England, which has organized a service trip to Lourdes for more than a century.  Since the mid-1990s, Joe Michaud '90 has organized and led this pilgrimage each year. 

Read a journal written by Jamie Chapman '12 detailing her pilgrimage to Lourdes with Ampleforth during the summer of 2011.

Knights of Malta

For 17 years, Dom Joseph Byron led a second pilgrimage to Lourdes under the auspices of the Knights of Malta and Mrs. Hope Carter, mother of Charles E. '82 and George E. '85 Carter.  Ms. Nancy Brzys, dean of faculty and French teacher, led the pilgrimage in 2009 and 2010.

Click here to read an account and see photos by Nancy Brzys.