On the first Friday of each month, Rita leaves her home in Pallansena, a suburb about fifteen miles north of Colombo, and travels for more than three hours in a crowded bus to the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in a village called Kudagama. Rita has been making this journey almost every month for the last ten years: at one time she was going every week. She goes because she considers this shrine to be the most sacred spot in the whole of Sri Lanka, a place chosen by the Virgin Mary to make her powers known to humanity.

Rita can vividly remember her first visit to Kudagama. She had come with her sister, who was having problems with her daughter. The girl was refusing to go to school and sat around the house doing nothing. Rita's sister had heard of Kudagama and Father Jayamanne, the parish priest. He was said to have remarkable powers and to be able to cure the sick and the distressed. So she asked Rita to come along and keep them company, even though Rita didn't have much faith in such places. ‘I was ignorant in those days’, says Rita. ‘I had no idea of the power of Our Lady or of Father Jayamanne.’

The first time they went to Kudagama, Rita travelled by the regular state-run bus service to Kurunegala and then changed to a smaller bus which ran to Kudagama. She says she first realised how popular the shrine was when they had to fight to get on the Kudagama bus.