Lourdes Pilgrimage 2026

For more than seventy years, the Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage has been one of the most remarkable expressions of the Benedictine spirit of Ampleforth. Founded by Ampleforth Abbey in the 1950s, it began as a way for monks and students to accompany and serve those in need of assistance in Lourdes. Today, it remains a defining part of the Ampleforth story, bringing together more than 300 pilgrims from across the Ampleforth family, including students, recent leavers, parents, monks, staff, Old Amplefordians and friends from around the world. 

For this year's Year 12 students, many making the pilgrimage for the first time, Lourdes offered something increasingly rare: a genuine encounter with the needs of others. In a world often focused on achievement, performance and individual success, students found themselves alongside Assisted Pilgrims whose courage, resilience and joy challenge assumptions and inspire reflection. Through simple acts of service, conversation and companionship, many discovered that helping others is not merely something we do, but something that changes us. 

This enduring impact is perhaps the greatest strength of the Ampleforth Lourdes Pilgrimage. So many of the students who first travel to Lourdes return year after year as volunteers. This year, more than 120 pilgrims were under the age of thirty, an extraordinary number and a powerful testament to the transformative effect of the pilgrimage. Among them were many recent Ampleforth leavers who chose to spend part of their summer serving others alongside the next generation of students. Their continued commitment demonstrates how deeply the values encountered in Lourdes remain with people long after they leave the College. 

What makes Lourdes so special is that it creates a community that lasts a lifetime. Students quickly discover that they are becoming part of something far larger than themselves: a global network of friendship, service and faith that spans generations and continents. Whether they continue practising their faith or not, many former pilgrims speak of Lourdes as one of the formative experiences of their lives, shaping their values, broadening their perspectives and introducing them to friendships that endure for decades. 

 The scale and significance of the Ampleforth presence in Lourdes is itself remarkable. So substantial has the contribution of Ampleforth pilgrims become over many decades that the pilgrimage is recognised in Lourdes on a level comparable to many diocesan pilgrimages. Yet its character remains distinctive. Few schools can point to such a long-standing tradition of service, and fewer still can say that successive generations of students, parents and alumni continue to return voluntarily to participate. 

A particular highlight of this year's pilgrimage was the exceptional choir, conducted by recent Head Monitor Finbar Flannery. Through their music, the choir helped create liturgies of great beauty and prayerfulness, providing some of the week's most moving moments. Their contribution reflected the same spirit of generosity and commitment that characterised the pilgrimage as a whole. 

Perhaps most striking of all was the truly multi-generational nature of the week. Parents served alongside their children, recent leavers alongside experienced pilgrims, and monks alongside students encountering Lourdes for the first time. In an age when communities can often feel fragmented, Lourdes remains a place where people come together in friendship, purpose and service. 

For Ampleforth students, therefore, Lourdes is far more than a trip. It is one of the great differentiators of an Ampleforth education: an experience that develops compassion, confidence, perspective and character; that introduces young people to a lifelong community; and that demonstrates, in the most practical way possible, what it means to live for others. It is little wonder that so many return, year after year, carrying the culture of service they first encountered in Lourdes into the rest of their lives.