Oktav of Our Lady of Luxembourg: A Pilgrimage of Faith and Tradition

The 400th Jubilee Celebration of Our Lady of Luxembourg began in December 2024 as the Archdiocese of Luxembourg celebrated the 400th anniversary of the devotion to Our Lady of Luxembourg under the vocable of  “Consolatrix Afflictorum” (Consoler of the Afflicted). The December 1624 procession with the statue of the virgin Mary was the starting point of the erection of a pilgrimage chapel and the election of the Consoler as the protector of the city of Luxembourg (1666) and the country (1678). Since that time, pilgrims yearly converge in procession to the Cathedral, which now houses the statue, for the event known as the Oktav. 

This virtual program will detail the history of the veneration of the Consoler, both in Luxembourg as well as in the United States, where Luxembourg emigrants brought along this national religious tradition.

About the Speaker:

LACS board member Jean Ensch is a founding member of the Luxembourg Genealogical Society (ALGH), President of the Institut Grand-Ducal (Section of linguistics, ethnology, and onomastics). In 2014 he retired from his public service position with the City of Luxembourg after 41 years with the Population Bureau. Jean has conducted research and published extensively in the areas of history, genealogy, demographics and emigration, specifically to the United States. His most recent works include a bibliography on Luxembourg local history dealing with houses and their inhabitants “A la recherche de maisons” and as a contributing author to a biographical and genealogical history of the Luxembourgers in the La Crosse area (Sandra L. Hammes: From Luxembourg to La Crosse and Beyond, 1851-1910), both published in 2017. “Letzte Heimat in der Fremde,” an essay on Luxembourg emigrants’ tombstones in the Midwest, was published in 2019. In 2021, he published in the exhibition catalog Pour Élise of the Luxembourg-City Museum, “L’environnement familial d’Elise Hack,” a genealogy on the family of Elise Hack, an art donator to the City of Luxembourg and also in the Luxembourg-City magazine Ons Stad: “Le don de la Ville de Luxembourg à la Ville de Dormans,” a report on reconstruction help by the City of Luxembourg to the City of Dormans (Champagne), severely damaged in WWI. In 2023, he published in the art magazine of the Institut Grand-Ducal, Section of Arts and Letters, of his research on Luxembourg painter Frantz Seimetz, who lived in the New World from 1889-1896, “Seimetz au Nouveau Monde.” 

In that same year, he co-authored with Carlo Krieger, an article on Luxembourg emigration to Brazil “Clerfer Auswanderer in Südbrasilien”.

On the tech side, he was involved in the development of an educational computer game on Luxembourg emigration to the US: “The Migrants’ Chronicles 1892”, an international collaboration between the University of Luxembourg, the Cologne Game Lab of the Technische Hochschule Köln in Germany and the Carleton College, MN.