Nursing students provide spiritual care at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes

Marty McNaughton (BSN ’25) was finishing a day of service in the baths of Lourdes, France, when an elderly Spanish couple walked into the room.

Though visibly ill, the husband shaking with tremors and the wife with a swollen arm, they were smiling. As they began to pray before an image of the Virgin Mary—the first step in a ritual meant to bring physical, emotional, and spiritual healing
—their demeanor quickly changed. Within minutes, the couple was
sobbing and clinging to one another.

McNaughton, one of seven Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing students who took part in the school’s thirteenth annual service immersion trip to Lourdes this year, could only guess at their story as he helped them complete the ritual.

He poured spring water from a pitcher into the couple’s hands, then showed them how to perform the three gestures meant to bring healing to the faithful: washing their hands, then their face, and finally drinking the water from their cupped palms.

The gestures were simple, but for the Spanish couple, like millions of other miracle seekers who visit the baths each year, “it’s so much more than that,” says McNaughton.

“You could see it on their faces. You could see their gratitude and their grief and their hope,” he says. “They left the baths, and you could tell they felt relief, like there was some sort of weight lifted off their shoulders. In some way, that’s the miracle of Lourdes.”

The Lourdes trip is meant to help undergraduate nursing students learn how to provide spiritual care to their patients. It’s a concept woven throughout their classes in Chicago, but the service immersion gives students the chance to experience firsthand what it means to provide care for the whole person.

For a week in May, students spend several hours a day assisting a steady stream of pilgrims—some ill and seeking healing and others simply seeking a deeper connection to their faith—inside the gray stone baths in one of the holiest sites for the Catholic Church. While students assist pilgrims with the bathing ritual, they do not provide medical treatment.

The experience helps students understand the meaning of cura personalis, the Jesuit principle of care for the whole person, and realize that “when you have a patient in a bed, there’s much more going on than the physical diagnosis,” says Loyola nursing Associate Professor Ann Solari-Twadell, the trip organizer.

“By the time students leave, they feel comfortable praying out loud with other people and recognizing the spiritual and religious needs of people who are either sick or are experiencing loss or grief,” she adds.

The idea for the trip originated with Father Michael Garanzini, S.J., former president of Loyola, who traveled to Lourdes years ago and witnessed volunteer nurses assisting pilgrims, many of whom were gravely ill or had physical or mental disabilities.

The nurses’ work—and the broader ethos within the vast religious site at Lourdes of embracing the sick and outcast with compassion and dignity—embody Loyola’s Jesuit mission, says Garanzini, now president of the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities.

Sending Loyola nursing students to Lourdes “is a special way to cap a Jesuit nursing education” and gives them the chance to develop crucial interpersonal skills needed to work with patients and families of all religions.

Garanzini notes that “in our technology-driven world, our terrific medical technology can sometimes come between the patient and the nurse. At a place like Lourdes, the heart of nursing is evident in each encounter. It’s just us.”

Students describe the experience as powerful.

“It was so much more than I anticipated, and it’s an experience not a lot of nursing students are able to have,” says McNaughton. “You have such a connection with these people that you’ll never see again. The hardest part is that you don’t know them or their life story or why they’re seeking this miracle.”

Lourdes, a small town in the Pyrenees mountains, became known as a center for inexplicable cures in 1858 when peasant Bernadette Soubirous reported being visited by the Virgin Mary. At Mary’s direction, she unearthed a spring whose waters today draw millions of pilgrims, both Catholic and non-
Catholic, to Lourdes each year in search of miracles.

Most but not all of the students who go on this trip are Catholic. Sophomore Kylie Piatek (BSN ’27) describes herself as “open spiritually to the world” but interested in exploring her family’s Catholic roots. She was surprised by the diversity of nationalities and religions of those who come to the baths and felt a surprising sense of calm in Lourdes that she can’t explain.

“It’s really every single religion, and it’s just a safe place for everybody,” she says.

Piatek and other students attend “formation” sessions throughout the week that introduce them to the complex operations at Lourdes. First-timers like Piatek and McNaughton tour the cathedral grounds, see the grotto where Soubirous, who was canonized in 1933, saw the apparitions—now the site of several crowded Masses each day—and visit one of three volunteer-staffed, medically equipped facilities where the sick can stay during their pilgrimage.

Other formation classes delve into the meaning behind the rituals. In one session, leaders asked participants to define what spirituality meant to them. They also addressed how volunteers should interact with the physically and mentally disabled pilgrims they would likely encounter at Lourdes: Treat them with dignity, speak to them directly, and look them in the eye, the teacher said.

For many students, that emphasis on upholding the humanity of the pilgrims—often isolated and ignored in their daily lives—is striking.

Ronald Chauca (BSN ’24) who also holds a theology degree, notes that in Christian tradition, God prioritizes the least—the widows, the orphans, the poor, and the sick.

“This is my first time seeing that in practice on a major scale,” he says.

In keeping with the Jesuit tradition of discernment, faculty and students take turns during the week leading group reflections, asking and answering questions like, Why were you called to be here? What will you take from the experience into your nursing practice?

For Mary Kate Lunt (BSN ’25) it’s learning to connect with people in the moment, whether they’re laughing, nervous, or serious.

“It’s helped me have confidence with patients,” she says.

McNaughton says his previous work in an intensive care unit exposed him to patients and families facing serious illness and death, and being at Lourdes has made him more comfortable dealing with their emotions.

“This experience has given me more confidence in sitting with people in their grief, because that’s what we’re doing—just taking a moment to be present with people in a way that health care doesn’t usually allow for, and I’ll definitely carry that into my practice.”

Read more stories from the Marcella Niehoff School of Nursing.