Grand Pardon de Notre-Dame de la Tronchaye

Faithful, pilgrims, locals, and visitors are expected from early morning in the cobbled streets of Rochefort-en-Terre to celebrate Our Lady of La Tronchaye. A Marian vigil is held the evening before, with hymns and prayers in Breton and French. A grand procession winds through the town's flower-filled streets, with banners and the statue carried by members of the confraternity. A solemn Mass is celebrated outdoors or in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Tronchaye. The sick and families are blessed at midday, followed by a procession back to the church and veneration of the statue. As every year, a preparatory novena is celebrated in the days leading up to the Pardon, with rosaries, Eucharistic adoration, confessions, and daily Masses at the sanctuary. History of the church: This building dates from the 12th and 16th centuries and has a Flamboyant Gothic façade and a Romanesque bell tower. It is located away from the town center and situated on a slope. Popular tradition recounts that in the 10th century, during the Norman (Viking) invasions, a priest hid a wooden statue of the Virgin and Child inside a hollow tree trunk to protect it from looting. Two centuries later, a shepherdess is said to have found the statue in the same trunk. A church was then built on the very spot where the statue was discovered. This story even gave the church its name, “Notre-Dame de la Tronchaye” (Our Lady of the Hollow Tree).