Newest Grottos Page 2
St. Joseph Cemetery, Conneaut, Ohio (2022)
In 2023, the historic church of St. Mary’s in Conneaut (built in 1888) was closed by order of the Bishop of the Diocese of Youngstown, following merger into Corpus Christi Parish in 2008, and cessation of services during the pandemic. Parishioners sadly removed the statues, church bell, and other items from the church before listing it for sale.
A lovely grotto stood next to St. Mary’s Church for decades, and in 2022, Corpus Christi parishioners were able to use the rocks and the same statue from that older grotto to build a new grotto at St. Joseph Cemetery (2.4 miles from St. Mary’s).
The new Blessed Virgin Mary Grotto was dedicated on Memorial Day, May 27, 2024.
The Blessed Virgin Mary Grotto includes a traditional statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, although I couldn’t see if the Bernadette statue shown in photos of the old grotto at St. Mary’s was incorporated into this new grotto or not.
After the grotto was completed in 2022, a large oval of concrete pavement was added in front of the grotto before the 2024 grotto dedication ceremony, next to the cemetery chapel. This makes the grotto area a wonderful and practical, wheelchair-accessible space for cemetery visitors, as well as for services. Corpus Christi Parish held its 2nd Memorial Day Mass in May 2025, and this will likely be an annual event for the community into the future. This is a beautiful grotto that allows the former parishioners of St. Mary’s to maintain contact with that church’s nearly 150-year history.
St. Joseph Church, Milton, Pennsylvania (2022)
After Holy Family Convent in Danville, Pennsylvania closed in 2018, parishioners from St. Joseph Church in nearby Milton (around 13 miles away) asked the Sisters of Christian Charity if their church could have the statues from the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes that had stood on the convent grounds since its construction in 1923, according to a November 4, 2022 Milton Standard-Journal article.
The sisters obliged and St. Joseph parishioners restored the statues, which had been damaged by vandalism. A new grotto was built in the St. Joseph Cemetery grounds, adjacent to the St. Joseph Parish Center (on the edge of Milton, about 1.4 miles from the church building near downtown Milton). It’s possible the inspiration for the grotto was a church pilgrimage to the famous Grotto of Lourdes at Mount St. Mary’s in Emmitsburg, MD.
The new grotto was dedicated November 2, 2022.
Some photos of the St. Joseph Parish Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, taken during a beautiful 2023 May crowning ceremony, from the parish Facebook page:
The Grotto at St. Joseph Cemetery is vertical grotto, with a rounded back and niche in a flat front wall, likely covered with a veneer of limestone. A Bernadette statue rests on a ledge just below the niche, which allows for additional seating or kneeling, as well as safe access to the statue of Our Lady during crowning ceremonies. Two matching stone benches enable seated devotion. The niche is lighted from within.
This grotto is a beautiful way to salvage the statues from the shuttered convent, allowing veneration of Our Lady to continue for future generations.
Peoria Notre Dame High School, Peoria, Illinois (2022)
The Fountain of Grace Grotto at Peoria Notre Dame High School was the vision of Sister Sara Kowal, SCTJM. Even when she worried that the school was already in need of expensive facilities improvements, she knows that the Lord assisted the school as if to say, “Put me first. Give my mother her place in your school and I will provide everything else you need,” according to an article in The Catholic Post. And donors stepped up with both monetary gifts and many prayers for the project–both of which made the grotto plans into reality.
The Fountain of Grace Grotto was blessed (see video here) on May 8, 2022. After a rosary procession around Peoria Notre Dame High School, Sister Lucia Maria Sol, SCTJM, and Sister Sara Kowal, SCTJM, carried the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes to her new home in the grotto. Then Father Corey Krengiel, school chaplain, blessed the grotto and at the same time reconsecrated the school named for her to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
A few photos of the grotto from the Peoria Notre Dame High School Facebook page and The Catholic Post:
The Fountain of Grace Grotto is built from thick, rough-edged limestone slabs of irregular shape, with larger slabs at the base and smaller slabs graduated upward, leaving a niche in the center, capped with a slab of perfect size. The grotto slabs are placed against an exterior concrete stairwell wall, which has been covered with a matching limestone veneer of irregular profile. Rough-edged stone benches compliment the grotto and provide seating for private devotion and group prayer.
Sprigs of flowering plants have been tucked into some of the gaps between grotto slabs; it’s unclear from the photos whether they are artificial plants, or whether pockets of soil in the gaps allow live annual flowers to survive with daily watering (which must be done for the several pots of flowering annuals nearby). Either way, it’s a beautiful effect. Additionally, a flower bed has been left next to the wall of the school and filled with more flowering plants.
The grotto was built by project manager and general contractor Greg Cicciarelli, stone mason Craig Kijanowski, and Dave Rudolph and Doug Simmons, who donated their time to pour the concrete floors. The statue was supplied by Lagron-Miller Company Catholic goods.
The Fountain of Grace Grotto is a beautiful addition to Peoria Notre Dame High School, turning an unattractive concrete stairwell into a lovely spot for devotion to Our Lady.
Mepkin Abbey, Moncks Corner, South Carolina (2022)
In 2021, due to dwindling numbers, the Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy sold their 23-acre property Mayforest, their motherhouse since 1959 on James Island near Charleston, to the state of South Carolina to be used as a state park.
On April 21, 2022, the sisters transferred the statues from their Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at Mayforest to the Trappist monks at Mepkin Abbey, 40 miles north of Charleston. The Mayforest grotto had been donated to the motherhouse by the family of Sister Bridget Sullivan, a former superior general for the motherhouse.
By November 2022, a new grotto had been completed at Mepkin Abbey (shown at right, below):
The old grotto at Mayforest was built in a bell curve shape with an arched top, with a white-painted niche for Our Lady. In front was a small, semicircular brick paved area sloping down to a well-like fountain.
The new grotto at Mepkin Abbey, located in a similar forested location dripping with Spanish moss, is a very simple curved, stepped wall of small stone blocks, without an arched top. A circular paver stone area echoes the same shape as the original grotto’s pavement. The new grotto’s simplicity focuses us on the statues of Our Lady and Bernadette, illustrating the astonishing moment when Our Lady first revealed herself to the peasant girl, and allowing us to imagine how we might feel in that moment.
The new Mepkin Abbey Grotto of Our lady of Lourdes is a beautiful, peaceful place to honor Our Lady, and is another inspiring example of salvaging the past to “reuse, recycle, renew” for the future.
St. Mark’s Church, Belmont, California (2022)
On December 4, 2022, St. Mark parishioners and clergy and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, witnessed the unveiling and blessing of the Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at St. Mark’s Church in Belmont.
Here’s a beautiful short video about the blessing of the grotto:
Here are some photos of the grotto from the church website and Facebook page:
The Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto at St. Mark’s is built in the traditional style, from rocks of irregular shape–rocks shaped by God and nature. It may have been constructed by professional stonemasons, but it still retains a natural irregularity that makes it unique and beautiful. In front of the grotto, which holds statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and Bernadette, is a small patio of stone or pressed concrete with two benches, and a water feature of three standing stones stands nearby. This is a lovely grotto to Our Lady.