"Indeed, there have been and continue to be any number of inexplicable, or miraculous if you will, cures which have taken place there," explains Myers. "Naturally, most people don't get cured, but even they have the satisfaction of having made in their last days a pilgrimage to one of the most intensely spiritual places on earth. There is a grotto there full of votive candles lit by people who have been cured or by supplicants. There is also a wall of crutches left behind by people who have allegedly been cured."

Myers also says that the University of Notre Dame has a somewhat smaller scale model of the Lourdes grotto, with candles but without crutches, on its campus, near one of the two lakes. "It is a truly popular place for prayer, contemplation, getting engaged, and so on. But back to the French original: the Catholic Church's official position on all of this is surprising ambivalent. On the one hand, Catholics are not required to believe in any miracle not mentioned in the Bible, but on the other hand places like Lourdes are sanctioned as devotional, if not necessarily miraculous, sites. The shrine itself is surrounded by many vendors selling all manner of kitschy souvenirs, who have no connection to the place other than the profit motive. I remember reading in the 1960s about some French filmmaker who, attracted by the tackiness of all the commercial activity, set out to make a satirical documentary about Lourdes but aborted his project when he experienced the true spirit of the shrine itself (also see Fatima).

Bowen seems to recall that there was a spring connected in some way with the apparition, "and I know that bottles of the water were carried home in the hope that a miracle might be transferred to some unfortunate who could not make the pilgrimage. That was Lourdes water."

Sacrosticky appears to include a play on the word sacristy, the name for a room next to the altar where the priest's vestments were kept, and from which he would emerge, preceded by altar boys, to begin the Mass.