More than 40,000 people...
including Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims...
attend each year the three-day national Marian celebrations...
at the Marian shrine in Nyaunglebin.
The shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes belongs to Yangon archdiocese. Since 2003, Archbishop Charles Maung Bo of Yangon presides at the celebration, which brings people from all over the country to pray at the shrine for the annual celebration keyed to the Feb.11th Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.
The feast has been celebrated in Myanmar since 1892...
when the late Bishop Paul Ambrose Bigandet decided to open a new mission at Nyaunglebin, and entrusted it to Father Michael Mignon, a member of the Paris Foreign Mission Society who built a wooden church, the first in Myanmar, and dedicated it to Our Lady of Lourdes.
The church was replaced by a new one in 1902. But was again shelled and partly destroyed during the Japanese occupation in World War II, which caused celebrations to be suspended. They resumed in 1948, and in 1957 the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on February 11th...
was made a national feast-day.
[bron]
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