St. Raphael

Archangel (III Class)

Benedict XV extended to the Universal Church the feast of the holy Archangel St. Raphael, who is known to us from the inspired words of the Book of Tobias as the angelical physician of soul and body.

We arrived in Carcassonne around 3:00 Friday morning and crashed into bed. We were up at 7:00 for breakfast, and then headed into the old city to explore. With its 3 km of walls Carcassonne is the largest walled town in Europe. It was an impressive city to say the least (click this link to see an amazing panoramic shot of the city at night). We spent the whole morning wandering about and playing on the walls. One of the city's chief claims to fame is that it was a stronghold of the catharist heretics in the 13th century. Impressive though the fortifications are, the city did fall to the Catholic crusaders in 1209. See if you can find Lisa, Maria, and Katie in the picture below.

We piled back onto the bus at noon and headed off to Toulouse to visit the tomb of St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the patron saints of our Institute. The Church in which his tomb lies has unfortunately been turned into a museum, but the reliquary of the Angelic Doctor has been preserved under the altar.

We had a picnic lunch in Toulouse and then headed off toward Lourdes on the final leg of our journey. We arrived around 6:00 in the evening, got settled into our lodgings, and had just a few minutes to pray at the grotto before hearing Mass in a little closet chapel at 7:30. Then it was off to a strange dinner of cafeteria beef tongue and squid, by the end of which we were so tired that we went right to bed.