St Joseph religious festivities: Saturday 16th March and Tuesday 19th March in Cotignac

On August 10, 1519, the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus appeared to John of La Baume, a craftsman who worked on Mount Verdaille. After the apparition he asked the locals to build a chapel in that same spot, to honour what he had seen. Two years later, the Notre-Dame-de-Graces sanctuary was completed and honoured by Pope Leon X within the Catholic church. The sanctuary became even more famous thanks to an illustrious pilgrim, King Louis XIV of France, who came to give thanks for his birth in 1660, accompanied by his mother Anne of Austria. In the same year, St Joseph appeared to Gaspard Ricard, a thirsty shepherd on Mount Bessillon, and indicated to him a source of water which still flows today. “Lift this rock and you will drink!” He apparently said. Therefore on August 9, 1660, a chapel dedicated to St Joseph was erected at that very spot, and later restored by the architect Fernand Pouillon when the Benedictine sisters settled there in 1977. Officially the only place in the world where the Holy Family has appeared to ordinary folk, Cotignac has become a highly sought-after place of pilgrimage. Every year around 150,000 pilgrims put on their walking shoes to make the trip to the sanctuary, their backpacks filled with hopes and prayers.