Asher Kaufman, age 18, set out on June 28, 2025 for a yearlong trip to help spread the Children's Rosary in Europe and Africa. He has been spending the month of July at La Salette Shrine in the Alps. He grew up helping the Children's Rosary and participating in it. He now is helping to spread the Children's Rosary to more parishes and schools. Please keep his trip in your prayers. He has been sharing dispatches from the trip. His dispatches are often rich with history as he has a love of this subject. On Monday, July 14, I took the day to go to the Shrine of Notre Dame du Laus to stop in at the Adoratio conference there. My mother and I had attended Adoratio in 2024 in Toulon, and so it was nice to see attendees again, including Fr. Florian, and to meet people I had only known online, including Stefan from Germany (shown in the picture above far left), who was so munificent as to have printed and send many Children's Rosary books for distribution. I took the bus to Gap from Corps, and Florence, who was kind enough to host us for dinner last year when we were in France, generously took me from the Gap bus station to the Shrine.
After I arrived, Fr. Florian invited me to dine with the other priests, after which I met up with the French group leaders (photo at the top of the post) and then walked around a bit, seeing the Basilica and the house of the visionary, Benoîte.
Perhaps some of you are aware of the apparitions at Notre Dame du Laus and know the story, but others of you may have never heard of it, so as with La Salette, I will give some context.
It was May 1664. In London, Charles II had just ascended to the throne of England some years before, heralding the beginning of the Stuart Restoration. In Paris, Louis XIV was beginning his long absolutist reign of France as the Sun King. In Amsterdam, the Dutch were enjoying a golden age of cultural and economic well-being after their successful war for independence from Spain, characterized by great triumphs of Dutch literature and art, such as The Jewish Bride by Rembrandt. On Manhattan island, the future King James II of England was three months away from capturing the city of New Amsterdam from the Netherlands. In Leipzig, the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz had received his Master's degree in philosophy three months before. At Oxford, Robert Hooke had just discovered biological cells using his famous microscope. Meanwhile, at Cambridge, a young man named Isaac Newton was just completing his third year of studies. And in the rural countryside of southeastern France, the Virgin Mary appeared to a simple shepherd girl named Benoîte Rencurel.
At that point in time, the Catholic Church in the Hautes-Alps region of France had been wracked by a wave of Jansenist theology. This theological position, originally proposed by the Dutch theologian Cornelius Jansen, took a dark view of man's nature. With notable Calvinist overtones, Jansenism placed nearly exclusive emphasis on the necessity of God's grace to save and downplayed or rejected the role of human free will. Men were either predestined to receive irresistible grace from God or they were not, but on their own, they could not resist sin, according to Jansenist theology. Their views also led them to look suspiciously on the frequent reception of communion and participation in pilgrimages.
It was at this time that Benoîte, 17 years old, first saw the Virgin Mary. She worked as a shepherd to support herself after the death of her father when she was only 7 years old.
The shepherdess was pasturing her sheep in a little village called "des Fours," and she was praying the Rosary. She saw a "beautiful Lady" standing near her. Not knowing who this might be, she asked the Lady who she was and what it was she wanted. However, the Lady did not respond. For three months, this continued each day, with the silent apparitions and the unanswered questions.
Once rumor of this had spread, a local judge, François Grimaud, questioned the girl about what she had seen. Struck by the simple and unassuming responses he received, he became convinced she was telling the truth. Eventually the Lady revealed Herself as the Mother of God, and when, in September, the Lady asked Benoîte to organize a pilgrimage with the young people from her parish to the mountain the next day, Grimaud helped the parish priest to facilitate such a pilgrimage.
On September 29, the Lady asked Benoîte to find a small chapel in Laus, from which would emanate pleasing odors, and pray there. At that point, Benoîte did not live in Laus, and so there she went. She found in Laus an oratory dedicated to "Notre-Dame de Bon-Rencontre" in ruins from which emanated the promised odor.
Our Lady appeared to her on that spot and told her that a great church would be built in that place for the conversion of sinners. Within a few years, a Church was built around the old oratory in that very place. The apparitions would continue there for over half a century, until Benoîte's death in 1718. The Church still stands today, inside of which priests are available to administer the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When I arrived, there was a Mass underway, celebrated by one of the priests of the Missionaries of the Holy Eucharist, Fr. Florian Racine's order. Inside of the chapel, there is the Holy Oil of Laus, which feeds a candle that burns continuously. Our Lady told Benoîte that this oil, if one applies it and prays for Our Lady's intercession with faith, will cause healing. I obtained some of it from little bottles they give away by the welcome desk.
In 1673, Jesus crucified appeared to Benoîte. From then on, until 1684, every Friday from 4:00 until 9:00 am Saturday, Benoite witnessed the Passion of Jesus Christ.
As Our Lady had told Benoîte in 1664, the message of Laus would be above all, a call to repentance and to confession. And so, schooled under Our Lady's direction for many years, Benoîte's life mission was to help great sinners to repent and to find them suitable confessors. In the later years of the apparitions, Benoîte endured hostility from Jansenist clerics in the region who disliked the continuous confessions and frequent communions and pilgrimages at Laus.
In 1718, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, Benoîte died, and the apparitions at Laus ended.
During the French Revolution, the priests stationed at the Shrine were expelled by the Revolutionary government. It was bought again by Bienvenu de Miollis, the Bishop of Digne, in 1805. This was the bishop, incidentally, who inspired the character of Monseigneur Myriel in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. The cause for his beatification was opened in 2023.
In June of 2005, Bishop Jean-Michel Di Falco, bishop of Gap, began the process of approving the apparition site, appointing a committee of historians, theologians, and psychologists to sift through the documents and evidence and determine whether ecclesiastical approval could be given. The committee unanimously determined there was no obstacle to approval, and, on May 4, 2008, at the Basilica of Notre Dame du Laus, Bishop Jean-Michel Di Falco, in the presence of the apostolic nuncio to France, declared that the apparitions had been officially approved by the Catholic Church.
After having lunch with Fr. Florian and taking a picture with the group leaders, I walked down with Stefan to the house of Benoîte.
The whole village is a very beautiful and peaceful place with many apparition sites since the apparitions continued over 54 years.
I said some prayers, took some pictures, and then it was time to take the bus back to Corps.