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1957 postcard connects Atlantic City shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes
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ATLANTIC CITY - Could a 1950s postcard shed some light on the identity of a local shrine?
The statue standing on an outdoor pedestal at the parish church of Our Lady Star of the Sea certainly depicts the Virgin Mary.
But which of Mary's many guises? Since Easter, parishioners and parish officials have debated whether the statue is connected to the famous French shrine at Lourdes. There, in 1858, a peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous claimed to see repeated visions of the Virgin Mary.
While faithful pilgrims now flock to that original site, often in hopes of healing, similar Lourdes shrines have appeared elsewhere, including in the U.S.
And that's where the confusion at the Atlantic City Catholic church started. Christina Thomasello, a parishioner at Our Lady Star of the Sea, has long claimed that the statue of Mary on the church grounds has a connection to Lourdes.
Before Easter, she and other like-minded volunteers ordered a small statue of Soubirous - now better known as St. Bernadette - to sit alongside what they say is an Our Lady of Lourdes shrine.
The parish priest, Father Joseph Pham, disagreed, saying the statue represents Mary as Our Lady Star of the Sea, named like the parish and a designation often found in nautical communities.
So when the statue was delivered to the rectory, he refused to place it at the shrine, and simply held onto it.
When the diocese weighed in to support Pham, spokesman Andrew Walton discounted a Lourdes connection.
"There's no history of that," he said at the time.
So Walton was surprised to hear of an unlikely clue to the contrary.
A postcard, dated 1957, has surfaced, with a painting of the shrine on its front.
Above it, the caption reads: "Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes."
Atlantic City historian Allen "Boo" Pergament was the first to draw attention to the card, which was printed and sold by a company based in St. Paul, Minn., named E.C. Kropp.
"It clearly shows there's some history to the idea of that Lourdes connection," Pergament said in a phone interview.
Other parishioners dug up other instances.
Robert Johnson, of Atlantic City, found a copy available for sale at a vintage card-seller online.
On the back of the postcard, a typed note reads in part: "The Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes erected in the spring of 1937, of Italian marble in a setting of natural stone, is one of the newer landmarks of Atlantic City."
At the same time, parishioners such as Mary Harper, who studied at the adjacent Our Lady Star of the Sea school, disagreed that the idea of a Lourdes connection had been well-known.
"I attended school there from 1953-58 and never heard any mention of the shrine being associated with the Lourdes visions," she wrote in an e-mail. "And I'm sure we would have heard since we celebrated the 100th anniversary (of St. Bernadette's visions) my last year at the school," she added.
Does the postcard prove a Lourdes connection to the parish?
Walton said he thought not.
"Those cards were not produced by the church," he explained by phone Friday.
Referring to the original dispute over the St. Bernadette statue, Walton said, "We still support Father Pham as he balances the desire for a public shrine with preventing anyone from customizing it."
Thomasello said earlier that over previous months, she and a number of volunteers had tended to the shrine, planting flowers and adding solar lamps for illumination. Another woman had set up a small birdbath containing a vial labeled as water from Lourdes grotto.
In mid-May, she says, after the issue of the statue became public, parish officials cleared away all ornaments, photos and prayer-cards from the shrine.
A paper plaque made by Thomasello referencing Lourdes was taken away, she said. But so were numerous photos placed there by parishioners of loved ones who had died.
"I'm still in shock about that," Thomasello said.
Father Pham, former pastors of the parish and staff from the adjacent school could not be reached for comment. Walton said he did not know the shrine had been cleared.
Still, while the mystery of why the postcards were printed continues, Walton said there was nothing wrong with people continuing to think of the statue as Our Lady of Lourdes.
"The shrine was never dedicated to Lourdes," he said. "But, as with any shrine, the purpose is to illuminate the mysteries of the faith."
E-mail Juliet Fletcher:
Posted in Atlantic_city on Monday, June 8, 2009 3:10 am
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