A Lourdes in Foothills of Maryland
June 26, 2001 - source: By Amy Argetsinger / Washington Post Staff Writer

EMMITSBURG, Md. ­ She gazes from the treetops upon the valley they named for her, upon the farms, the town and the college and the traffic whistling past on U.S. Route 15.

For the tourists driving on to the battlefields of Gettysburg or the roller coasters of Hersheypark, the golden statue of the Virgin Mary floating above a Blue Ridge foothill offers the only explanation for the enigmatic sign by the side of the road. Grotto of Lourdes? they wonder. Isn't that in France?

The statue, though, is merely the gatekeeper to what may be one of the biggest open secrets in American Catholicism. It is a historic site -- the oldest shrine in the country devoted to Mary -- but also a popular open-air chapel offering regular Masses. Lately, some have claimed it as a place of miraculous cures and visions. But to most -- including church officials -- it is simply an inspirational walk in the woods.

Little advertised, the grotto nonetheless claims half a million visitors a year. Here come some now.

It's a family, in shorts and ball caps, tramping up the hill, laughing and bickering like any weary sightseers. Except that every few yards, they stop to pray.

"Whose turn is it now?" one of them asks at one of the Stations of the Cross that line the trail.

"Let's do it in order."

"Our Fathers or Hail Marys?"

Farther along the trail, a preteen girl skips up to a statue of a friar surrounded by birds and woodland creatures.

"St. Anthony!" she says.

"Errrrhhhhh!" her mother chirps, mimicking a game show buzzer, before correcting her: "St. Francis."

The grotto was a favorite place of Elizabeth Ann Seton, the wealthy New York widow-turned-nun who became America's first native-born saint. The spot was discovered in 1805 by her colleague, Father John DuBois, a French missionary sent to minister in the western wilds of Frederick. Hiking back above the valley where he later built Mount St. Mary's College and Seminary, DuBois found a huge tree with exposed roots that could shelter a person like a cave -- or, a grotto. He erected a simple wooden cross nearby.

In 1809, Seton and her Sisters of Charity moved here from Baltimore to teach local children. On Sundays, the nuns would hike up the hill for Mass with DuBois, then linger in the woods afterward to picnic and pray.

For years the place remained rustic. Later, one of DuBois's successors added trails, statues, fountains and the Stations of the Cross. The tree rotted and was replaced by a tiny stone chapel. In 1875, workers added the stone shrine with a statue of Mary -- a reproduction of the grotto near Lourdes, France, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to the peasant girl Bernadette in 1858.

A century later, in 1958, Emmitsburg's Grotto was opened to the public. Today it hosts dozens of weddings, hundreds of busloads of pilgrims, and thousands of worshipers at its open-air services. In winter, when it is closed for maintenance, "people show up at the gates so upset," said Nancy Gregg Poss, associate director of public relations at the college. "They all say, 'We want to see the grotto!' "

Visits increased dramatically over the last decade. It was a time of renewed interest in Mary worldwide that coincided with a rash of reported visions regarded somewhat uneasily by the Roman Catholic Church.

One such vision was reported by Gianna Talone-Sullivan, an Arizona woman who visited the Emmitsburg grotto and later moved to the area to open a medical mission. Throughout the '90s, hundreds of believers traveled here to watch her receive what she said were weekly visits from Mary.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore has disputed her claims. Concerned that the lingering issue was disrupting the local parish, Cardinal William H. Keeler this month opened a formal investigation into her claims.

One of the new pilgrims to the grotto is Pat Cairo, 55, who moved from Silver Spring to Frederick several years ago after hearing of Talone-Sullivan's visions. Cairo now visits the Emmitsburg grotto three times a week.

"This is going to be greater than Lourdes . . . greater than Fatima," she tells another pilgrim she meets alongside a devotional spring on the hillside. The water, she says, has cured the sick. She drinks it regularly herself.

Church officials discourage talk of the grotto as a place of miracles. It is, they say, simply a place to pray, to reflect, to find peace. In that regard, they agree with Cairo, who turned to these quiet woods after a car wreck that left her shaky and distraught.

"When you come up here," she says, sitting in the shade beside a still pool, "there's a strength you get for a while."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company