HEN the Roaring Twenties were in full throttle elsewhere in Europe, a member of the fraternity of De La Salle had his mind dedicated to other matters. The Brothers of the Christian Schools, a Catholic religious order, established themselves in Guernsey in 1904 and opened a Catholic boys’ school. One of the members, Brother Déodat, arrived to take up the role of sacristan on the eve of the First World War. Convinced that children learn mostly through their eyes, he had an idea. According to his diary, his attention was caught by a copse of trees in the Vauxbelets valley, which was—in his mind—eminently suitable for the erection of a grotto resembling that at Lourdes in France, with a
