A humid Saturday morning and clearly it is moving day in Lourdes. Dozens of buses clog the narrow streets of the town in the Pyrenees, hazard lights on as people are wheeled or carried from their hotels, others moving with a pep in their step as if the visit to the Marian shrine has uplifted them.

More than 30,000 people have registered for the Pastoral Congress, one of the main elements of the Catholic Church’s World Meeting of Families (WMoF) being held in Dublin in August just before the visit of Pope Francis.

The parents of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann made a personal pilgrimage to the holiest site in Portugal today to pray for a miracle.

AN official from the Irish Embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has been appointed to co-ordinate efforts to find an Irish woman who disappeared more than a week ago while on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje.

A record number of passengers are flying in and out of Knock International Airport this Christmas, it emerged today.