{"id":381142,"date":"2026-10-23T21:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/381142\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T21:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T21:56:09","slug":"faithfull-line-up-to-venerate-st-bernadette-relics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/381142\/","title":{"rendered":"Faithfull Line Up To Venerate St. Bernadette Relics"},"content":{"rendered":"

DYKER HEIGHTS \u2014 By the time the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette opened its doors on Oct. 19 to offer the faithful the chance to venerate first\u2013class relics of the church\u2019s namesake, the line stretched around the block. \u00a0
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\u201cThis is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,\u201d said Ron Rice, a St. Bernadette parishioner, one of the hundreds of faithful who attended. \u201cI think it will deepen my faith.\u201d \u00a0
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St. Bernadette was a miller\u2019s daughter from France, whose apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a grotto in Lourdes in 1858 became a much-beloved part of Church history. The first-class relics brought to the church included strands of her hair, fragments of her fifth and sixth ribs, her kneecaps, a sample of muscle from her right femur, and fragments of other muscles and skin. \u00a0
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The relics are kept in a 24-karat gold-plated reliquary that the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France is currently bringing to churches around the U.S. as part of the \u201cJourney of Grace\u201d tour. The relics are considered first class because they are actual parts of St. Bernadette\u2019s body. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that does attract many more people, and that\u2019s maybe why so many people have come through our doors today,\u201d said Father Jeremy Canna, pastor of the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette. \u201cThe opportunity to perhaps get closer to her in a way that they, on most other days in their life, would not be able to.\u201d\u00a0
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The Shrine Church of St. Bernadette<\/a> was one stop on the 140-stop tour, which began in September and will end next August.\u00a0
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The faithful, many clutching rosaries and crosses, patiently filed into the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette to venerate the relics. The reliquary, contained in a glass case, stood in the center of the altar. At the edge of the altar stood two pedestals, each holding a small section of the grotto from Lourdes that the faithful could touch. <\/p>\n

\"\"The first people in the line arrived more than an hour before the doors to the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette opened.<\/p>\n

Many in attendance handed their rosaries, crosses, and medals to a church volunteer on the altar and asked them to touch the reliquary\u2019s glass case with them.\u00a0
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St. Bernadette (1844-1879) is the patron saint of illness and body infirmity. Many people said they were there to ask for her intercession and help coping.\u00a0
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Sean McCann, who was diagnosed with ALS (known as Lou Gehrig\u2019s disease) in 2024, came in his wheelchair from Staten Island with his mother, Sue Glynn, a breast cancer survivor, and his stepfather, William Glynn, a prostate cancer survivor.\u00a0
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\u201cI\u2019m not looking for a cure. \u2026 It\u2019s more like, \u2018Please, whatever\u2019s thrown at me next, give me some sort of strength to navigate it,\u2019 \u201d McCann said.\u00a0
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As she stood in line outside of the church, Bernadette McQuade, a parishioner of Mary Queen of Heaven Church in Mill Basin, said she was eager to see the relics, knowing she\u2019ll never make it to Lourdes herself. \u00a0
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\u201cWhen I heard her relics were going to be here, I wanted to be here,\u201d she said.\u00a0
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Father Canna, who said he was surprised by the sheer size of the crowds, added that he hoped people could benefit from venerating the relics.\u00a0
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\u201cI hope they\u2019re able to spiritually unite themselves with Lourdes and the baths that are at Lourdes and (have) opportunity to find a sense of God\u2019s healing in their life,\u201d he said, \u201cwhether it be body or soul \u2026 and be able to take God\u2019s healing with them from this day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DYKER HEIGHTS \u2014 By the time the Shrine Church of St. Bernadette opened its doors on Oct. 19…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[23130,139692,139693,139694,139695,9,24,63,139696,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-381142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-diocese-of-brooklyn","tag-father-jeremy-canna","tag-first-class-relics","tag-journey-of-grace-tour","tag-lourdes","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-shrine-church-of-st-bernadette","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}