The church is at 128 16th Avenue North and the Grotto is just to the south of it, set back from 16th Avenue. The marble statue is the second to be mounted here, the first having been destroyed by vandals in 2012.
Our Lady Of Lourdes is a parallel for Mary, mother of Jesus or The Madonna. This name came about as a result of apparitions which appeared to a young girl in the French City of Lourdes beginning on February 11th, 1858, when Saint Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old girl, first spoke with an apparition that appeared to her in the cave of Massabielle. The apparition introduced herself as The Immaculate Conception, or Mary, the mother of Jesus. According to the legend, seventeen further occasions of the appearance of the apparition were reported by Bernadette that year. Bernadette Soubirous was later canonized as a Saint.
Since that time replicas of the Lourdes Grotto, such as this one, have been constructed the world over as altars for those unable to make the pilgrimage to Lourdes, France.
Early History of Holy Cross Parish
According to early records, a little log church was built around the year 1878 by Father Fouquet, south of the present Town of Creston and near the banks of the Kootenay River. It is thought this may have been the church of the "Flat Bows" mentioned in early baptismal records and in the diaries of David Thompson. The beautiful old building Church named St. Peter's was built by Father Coccola in the later 1890s. This beautiful church on the lower Kootenay Indian Reserve is not presently in use, but is maintained by members of the Band Council.
The little white Church was built by Father James Wagner's leadership in 1907 at the 10th Avenue was called the Holy Cross Church of Creston.
From Holy Cross Parish