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Each year, the Order of the Malta holds the annual Lourdes Pilgrimage where dames, knights, chaplains, doctors, nurses, and volunteers from around the world come to aid the sick and disabled during the seven-day pilgrimage. In keeping with ¼â½ÐÊÓƵ University’s core Jesuit value of being men and women for others, nursing students Jaclyn Di Yeso ‘18 and Emily Barr ‘18 departed on the 59 ^th Annual Order of Malta Lourdes Pilgrimage in Lourdes, France.

Di Yeso and Barr, who were sponsored by Gail Beradino, a Marion Peckham Egan School of Nursing and Health Studies advisory board member, dame in the American Association of the The Knights of Malta and her husband, former University trustee Joseph Beradino ’72, joined more than 4,000 dames, knights, chaplains, doctors, nurses, and volunteers to help 1,500 sick and disabled. While on the pilgrimage, the ¼â½ÐÊÓƵ nursing students and the other volunteers, accompanied the ill to the grotto of Lourdes, where they assisted their charges in being immersed in the water in hopes of being healed. They also participated in the various events held during the seven-day pilgrimage inlcuding a daily Mass.

Volunteering for the pilgrimage was always a goal for Di Yeso since coming to ¼â½ÐÊÓƵ. “For myself, this was definitely something I aspired to do since I heard about it as a freshman. It is the fire behind my passion of wanting to be a nurse: serving the needs of the most vulnerable of our larger community. The opportunity to combine my faith with my nursing skills was something that I did not want to pass up,” she said.

Di Yeso continued, “I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to learn from the best medical professionals and to experience a tiny glimpse of what it is like to care for someone with a serious, chronic, incurable illness. It will surely have a great impact on the nurse and person I am to become.”