San Juan Parish's Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes was conceived as a place of pilgrimage for the faithful who wished to honor Our Lady and glimpse her place of apparition to St. Bernadette Soubirou in the Pyrenees Mountains of southern France beginning February 11, 1838. In 1888, fifteen years after Lourdes was declared an official Marian apparition by the Church, Fr. Camillo Seux, born in Lyon, France, and pastor from 1868-1922, erected the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes on the pedestal in front of the church across the street. Large numbers of pilgrims came to pray on their knees on the pavement beneath the statue, and moved by this sight, Fr. Seux decided to use his family's inheritance to build the shrine. Working with San Juan Pueblo's governor, he obtained a deed for the property. The site may also have been influenced by the fact that the third parish church was built there in 1645 and later destroyed in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680. The shrine was consecrated and blessed on April 19, 1890 by Archbishop Jean Baptiste Salpointe. It is believed that the architect was Martin Mouley, who also built the Basilica of St. Francis and the Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe. Built at one-fifth scale to Sainte Chapelle in Paris, constructed in 1248, the shrine follows a model of French Gothic church architecture. It is one of only nineteen buildings in the United States built entirely out of lava rock and contains the original stained glass windows imported from Claremont, France. The golden stars and the gold on the altar in the apse are twenty-three carat gold, and the statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette in the apse are part of the original shrine. The shrine was renovated in 2004 and rededicated by Archbishop Michael Sheehan on December 8, 2004, the one hundred fiftieth anniversary of the issuance of the Dogma on Mary's Immaculate Conception, the name she gave to St. Bernadette when asked who she was. During the renovation, electricity was not installed; instead, Elvira Salazar, who had conserved one of the original chandeliers, donated it back to the church, and with donations from Sara Montoya, her sister, and from the family of Dominic Maestas, two other chandeliers were replicated, with the original nearest to the altar. Fr. Seux, following a French tradition of burying famous priests, is buried under the floorboards of the main aisle along with his assistant priest for many years, Fr. Alverline, who also died in 1922. Daily Mass is celebrated in the shrine from May to October.

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Photo: Thomas Chris English

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