Basilica of Ars

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In the small village of Ars-sur-Formans, near Lyon, the basilica guards the shrine containing the body of Saint John Vianney, the humble Curé of Ars who, from 1818 to his death in 1859, drew crowds from all over France to his confessional and transformed his parish through prayer and charity. Built from 1862 onto the little twelfth-century Romanesque church where he ministered, it was designed by Pierre Bossan, the architect of Fourvière in Lyon. Canonized in 1925 and proclaimed patron saint of parish priests, the Curé of Ars still draws hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year; John Paul II came to Ars in October 1986, and the saint's feast is kept on 4 August.