Shrines around the World: Milk Grotto, Bethlehem

by Gunther Simmermacher · Published April 1, 2025 · Updated March 31, 2025

Chapel of the Milk Grotto. The cave church includes a modern chapel in which the Sisters of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament have practised perpetual Eucharistic adoration uninterrupted since 2016. Pics: Gunther Simmermacher (top right), Wikipedia

Where’s that?: In Bethlehem, Palestine, near the Basilica of the Nativity.

Our Lady’s connection: The cave where the Holy Family hid before the flight into Egypt.

The spot of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is marked by a silver star in the grotto of the basilica of the Nativity. Just a short walk from there is the Magharet Sitti Mariam, or Grotto of the Lady Mary, which is better known as the Milk Grotto.

Tradition has it that the Holy Family took refuge in this cave during the slaughter of the Innocents before fleeing to Egypt. St Paula, the wealthy friend of St Jerome, built the first church here in the early 5th century. The present cave church was built in 1872.

While Mary was nursing the infant Jesus in their place of refuge, the story goes,a drop of milk fell to the ground, instantly turning the walls of the grotto white. Geology tells us that the type of chalk stone here is naturally white, so this is merely a pious tradition. Still, for many centuries Christian and Muslim women have believed that ground powder from the grotto’s rock mixed in water boosts both fertility and the production of breast milk. Reams of photos and testimonies suggest that for many of these pilgrims, faith worked and pregnancy did indeed follow.

Pilgrims can no longer chip off pieces of stone for use as a fertility drug, but the Franciscan custodians put some of the powder in small packets which they give to people for a small donation.

There is also a tradition, going back to the 7th century, that the bones of the Holy Innocents are buried here.

Published in the January2025 issue of The Southern Cross magazine