The ailing 84-year-old pontiff, who will celebrate an open-air Mass for an expected 300,000 people on Sunday, was met at the airport on Saturday by French President Jacques Chirac.
Although the waters of Lourdes are said to bring miraculous healings, the Vatican denied the pope was seeking a cure for his Parkinson’s Disease, The Associated Press reported.
The trip to the small town in the French Pyrenees, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858, is John Paul’s second this year after a June visit to Switzerland