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Be aware that when you buy from other Stores that have imported the water, you may be buying stale water, that has been sat in storage for days, weeks or even months this water may not be fit to drink.” My personal favorite is the Lourdes bottled water key ring with a screw top, so you can have easy access to the holy waters while stuck in traffic.
    The “pilgrimage season” runs from Easter through October. Upon arriving, pilgrims are met by volunteers who guide them to the grotto and nearby baths, one for men and one for women. Volunteers assist bathers by helping those who come for healing submerge up to their chins in the water. If a person is unable to walk, a volunteer will carry him or her. In addition to the baths, pilgrims may also visit the actualspring, in order to fill containers to take the water home. The spring is covered in glass with spigots leading out of it. In 1990, due to heavy consumption, authorities had to ration Lourdes water.
    Unlike the holy wells described earlier, where news of legendary cures was passed on by word of mouth, the Catholic Church has meticulously documented miracles at sites around the globe. Indeed, in 1883, the Church created a formal system to confirm miracles at Lourdes. Known as the Bureau des Constatations Médicales (Medical Verification Agency), the Bureau has reviewed a staggering 6,700 claimed cures and deemed 66 officially “miraculous.”
    To obtain miracle status, the illness and cure must meet certain criteria set out in a rigorous, multistep review process. Pope Benedict XIV established these standards in the eighteenth century. An article in The Economist explains the core requirements:
The original disease must be incapacitating, with a sure and precise diagnosis. Any organic or physical ailment qualifies, but psychiatric conditions are, for the moment, excluded since diagnoses are too uncertain and recoveries too hard to assess. The cure, which should be sudden, instantaneous and without convalescence, must not result from medical treatment; and recovery must permanently restore the normal function to the beneficiary.
    When a pilgrim initially claims a miracle, a doctor will consult with the patient and the patient’s doctors and write up a case history. Assuming the cure has lasted, the patient then returns a year later with the relevant medical records. For a further three years, up to 250 doctors making pilgrimage to the site review the record. If the case makes it past this comprehensive review, it is submitted to an international medical committee, comprised of twenty experts (not all of the Catholic faith), that votes on recommending miracle status to the bishop of the patient’s diocese. A two-thirds majority vote is necessary to confirm that the case cannot be accounted for by medical understanding. With increased understanding of disease, it may not be surprising that there has been a significant decline in the number of documented Lourdes miracles, with only eight declared cures since 1956.

    While impressive in its rigor, such a detailed administrative process seems strangely at odds with the very idea of holy waters. Religious belief, after all, is often described as the ultimate leap of faith. This does not sit well with a rigorous examination to ensure objective verification of inexplicable events. Indeed, in 2008, the international medical panel of doctors, appointed by the Roman Catholic Church, stated that it no longer will approve miracles, leaving that decision to the Church officials.
    The intense interest of Catholics in Lourdes and its waters makes clear that the allure of holy waters is alive and well. This remains true in other cultures today. Consider this assessment in a multivolume history of water:
People come from all over the world to drink and collect the water [at Lourdes], just like the Hindus, who over thousands of years have carried water from the Ganges across the Indian subcontinent. Or like the Muslims, who for hundreds