Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes, Easo, Lifou
At the end of the Promontory of Easo, where the Catholic missionaries first landed in Lifou in April 1858, a small, slimmed chapel crowned by the image of the Virgin Mary rises on a coral cliff. Built in 1898 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the arrival of the Gospel on the island, the Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes offers a unique overview of the bays of Santal and Jinek, and is one of the most recognizable symbols of Catholic evangelization in the South Pacific. His vocation is Our Lady of Lourdes, not of the Assumption.
🌹 Wonders and anecdotes
- The first Catholic missionaries set foot in Lifou in April 1858, at the Eso meeting; forty years later, in 1898, the community erected this chapel in the same promontory as a permanent memorial of that evangelizing landing.
- The cast iron statue of the Virgin Mary, which crown the roof, was torn in her day by a cyclone and fell into the sea; sports divers found it at the bottom, rescued it and restored it to its place over the chapel.
- Next to the chapel of Lourdes, at the foot of the cliff, is the Church of San Francisco Javier, raised on the exact site of the first Catholic mission of the island, founded in 1858 by the Marist parents Montrouzier and Palazy.
- From the chapel platform, the Bay of Santal to the east and the Bay of Jinek to the west, a natural aquarium of crystalline waters, and in the southern winter, the humpback whales are raised in those same waters in front of the sacred promontory.
Our Lady of Lourdes
The Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes of Easo is the most photographed monument on the island of Lifou, in the Loyalty Islands of New Caledonia. Covered between two bays of turquoise water and set white under its red roof, it commemorates the landing of the first Catholic missionaries in 1858 and was built in 1898. The title is Our Lady of Lourdes - not the Assumption - and the feast is held locally on December 8 with great popular devotion.
"Our Lady of Lourdes, who from this cliff of the Pacific, is holding the seas that separated so many missionaries from their homeland, intercede by those who bring the Good News to the ends of the earth, and protect the peoples of the islands under your mantle.
Is the advocation of the Virgin Mary of your people missing?
Si no encuentras la advocación mariana de tu ciudad o pueblo, cuéntanosla: la investigaremos para ubicarla y darla a conocer en este mapa del amor de la Madre por el mundo.
Propose an apvocation →