New shrine for Derry's cityside as Lourdes statue of Virgin Mary donated to Derry Trust Fund

Anna Dillon said the new shrine will be installed in the Belmont area and will be open to all to come along and pray and visit once it opens in the coming weeks.

Anna and her colleagues in the Derry Trust Fund are well known across the city and beyond for their long-standing devotion and dedication to helping the sick.

Anna herself made her first visit to Lourdes over 50 years ago at the age of 26. Together with her late husband, well known gifted musician Dessie, Anna has fundraised continuously to cover the cost of taking people with a wide range of ailments and conditions from the north west to the holy site in France, making the trip themselves countless times over the years.

The new shrine in the Grianan Court area of Belmont will be installed by John Carton over the coming weeks and will feature the statue of the Virgin Mary and a relic of St Bernadette from Lourdes as well asna well with running holy water.

“It’s for the people of Derry and the north west and anybody can come along to it,” Anna told the Journal. “We’re arranging for Lourdes water to be part of the blessed water that will be going into it.

"Before Dessie died, he was presented with a relic out in Lourdes. I think it would be good if it was with the statue so everyone could come along and touch it.

"We wanted to put it where people have access to it and it is off the road.”

When the installation is complete, a special Mass will be held to officially dedicate the new shrine.

Lourdes has played a huge part in Anna’s life as it did that of her late husband.

“A few years after I had first gone I had a daughter, Charlene who had a brain tumour and we would take her to Lourdes. At the beginning when I started going out to Lourdes, Dessie would have arranged for other people to come along with me. Different people would have got to Lourdes that way. There were times when I’d come back from Lourdes and then take other people out there, maybe someone with cancer or a different illness."

Lourdes itself, and the range of options for getting there, has changed dramatically over the years. Anna recounted how difficult the logistics of the pilgrimage from Derry was in those early days for local people.

Some of the people Anna and Dessie helped get the Lourdes and indeed accompany on the journey were children and it is many of these trips with young pilgrims that Anna recalls most vividly, including one visit during which her late daughter developed a very special bond with a little boy from the city who they were accompanying to Lourdes.

Anna recalls how her husband Dessie had come back from playing in America and brought with him a little Indian doll in a basket for Charlene.

“Charlene had lost her eyesight by that stage. And we were wondering how to make sure we could get the wee boy to Lourdes and we used that wee basket to carry him and it made her trip. I took her and the baby along with his mammy.

"When we came back, Charlene was very quiet for a few days and I said, ‘what’s wrong with you?’ and she said ‘I’m reminiscing’. I said ‘gee, those are big words’. She asked what he was sleeping in now and I told her he was in his own wee cot. And then I said to her, ‘we will go and see him tomorrow’. You’d have thought she was hit with ice cubes all over, her whole wee body started to shake with excitement. She had had this connection with the wee boy.”

Over the years, the Derry Trust Fund trips continued, working through local travel agency founder Colm Arbuckle, and the fundraising to make this possible was always a big part, with others coming onboard to help organise one day shops, collection days, badges, auctions and other events.

"We did so many things,” Anna recalls. “We brought out a Mass book which Maureen Hegarty and Fr. Eddie McGuinness put together and we got the children from Steelstown Primary School to do the cover for it. They did their artworks based of what they thought of Lourdes and a wee boy by the name of Declan Curran, his artwork was selected for the cover. We also did our own Mass cards and Dessie’s fellow musicians in the town helped. Derry has been very good to us,” Anna said.

"Dessie was the main fundraiser. Then when he died we continued on and it never mattered what age, colour, creed, who anybody was or where they came from. It was always about taking the sick to Lourdes.”

Details for the Mass at which the shrine will be dedicated are expected to be confirmed over the coming weeks and will be shared nearer the time.

The Derry Trust Fund to this day continues to take people to Lourdes.

Anna thanked everyone who has supported the Derry Trust Fund down the years and all those who continues to do so.