Lourdes is a small town in the mountains of southwest France. In 1858 a poor girl there, Bernadette, said she saw the Virgin Mary appear, again and again, by a rock and a spring. The Catholic Church later said it believed her, and Lourdes became a holy place. Sick people still travel there from all over the world. They go to the grotto, they pray, and they drink or bathe in the spring water, hoping to be made well. Some say they were cured; the Church keeps a careful list and does not accept every story. Though actually, Lourdes is also an ordinary town that now lives on visitors — hotels, shops with little bottles, trains full of pilgrims and tourists. People who are not Catholic may still know the name because it stands for hope when medicine has little left to offer. In English the name is said in a French-ish way, not like ‘lords’. Some families, especially in Catholic countries, also give the name Lourdes to a girl, after the town. There is another Lourdes in Newfoundland, named after this one.