Basilique Saint-Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort

Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre

On 28 April 1716, Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort died in the midst of a mission at Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, worn out by sixteen years of preaching across the west of France. The little town on the banks of the Sèvre never got over it — in the happiest sense: around the missionary's tomb settled the three congregations he inspired, the Daughters of Wisdom, the Montfort Fathers and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel, to the point that the commune is nicknamed "the holy town of the Vendée". Beside him rests Blessed Marie-Louise Trichet, his first disciple and co-foundress of the Daughters of Wisdom, who died in 1759 and was beatified in 1993. On the site of an 11th-century church, the present basilica was launched with the laying of the first stone on 30 September 1889: crypt, apse, transept and bell tower rose from 1892, but it was not until 1949 that the nave was completed — sixty years of building carried by the fervour of the pilgrims. Consecrated in 1963, the church was raised the same year to the rank of minor basilica by John XXIII. Montfort, canonised in 1947, still draws the crowds: thousands of pilgrims file past his tomb every year, and Pope John Paul II, who owed to Montfort his motto "Totus tuus", came to pray here in 1996. Visitors see the crypt with its tombs and the great nave, and on lucky days hear the Formentelli organ of 1987 with its 2,900 pipes.

Getting there : 2 place Grignion de Montfort, in the centre of the town; free entry every day, daily services in the crypt, Sunday masses at 10.30 am and 6.30 pm.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound