Our Lady of La Salette · Grand Baie, Mauritius
On the northern coast of Mauritius, on the Royal Road of Grand Baie, a church built with brick and natural stone, named after the Virgin, appeared in the French Alps in 1846, has been raised since the mid-19th century. The parroquia of Notre-Dame de La Salette, canonically erected in 1864-1865, it was conceived as a miniature replica of the basilica of the shrine of La Salette- Fallavaux, in the massif of Belledonne. It belongs to the diocese of Port-Louis and remains today one of the main places of Catholic veneration in the north of the island.
🌹 Wonders and anecdotes
- The origin of the temple dates back to 1852, when the parish priest of Pamplemousses, Abbé Colyar, blessed a wooden chapel raised in 1823 by Victor Mazery on his property of Mare- Sèche and dedicated to Our Lady of Good Help; since 1854 the Most Holy Sacrament was reserved there.
- In 1859, the Mazery family donated twelve and a half to the bishopric and commissioned plans for a new church to reproduce the Alpine basilica of La Salette- Fallavaux, built in France next to the place of the apparition of 1846 to the children Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Calvat.
- On December 8, 1869, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Abbé Bardet opened a provisional chapel within the building site; the parish was definitely consolidated with a priest resident since 1865, becoming the spiritual center of the Mauritanian north.
- The present temple, with a brick and a local stone that gives it a warm and rustic character, celebrated in 1975 the centenary of the parish and continues to host two places of worship: the main church and the Chapelle des Saints-Anges-Gardiens in Grand-Baie, under the same parish title.
- The devotion to La Salette in Mauritius is an expression of the French evangelization of the island: the diocese of Port-Louis, whose cathedral is the oldest in the South Indian, formed missionaries who led the apvocation of the Alps to the heart of the Indian Ocean, thus weaving a devotional bridge between Catholic Europe and island Africa.
Our Lady of La Salette
The parish of Notre-Dame de La Salette in Grand Baie is the oldest in northern Mauritius. Founded in 1864-1865 on a wooden chapel of the previous century, it evokes the Alpine basilica where the Virgin appeared to two pastoral children in 1846. Its brick and natural stone building, surrounded by tropical vegetation, is now a place of pilgrimage and prayer for faithful from all over the island.
"Lady of La Salette, who you cried for your lost children, praise us for the grace of conversion and peace in our hearts.
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