Written by: Bernadette Berdychowski
Article source: religionunplugged.com
The rocky hazelnut chocolate Ferrero Rocher was created to honor the Virgin Mary and a little girl’s miraculous vision of her in Lourdes, France 162 years ago.
Michele Ferrero, the Italian businessman who owned the Ferrero group and turned it into the global candy corporation behind Nutella, Kinder, and Tic-Tac, was a devout Catholic. He passed away in 2015 on Valentine’s Day.
Executives say that Ferrero had a devotion to the Madonna of Lourdes, another name for Jesus’s mother, and made a pilgrimage once a year to the French site, according to the Guardian. There were statues of the Virgin Mary in every company building.
The grotto at Lourdes. Creative Commons photo.
“The success of Ferrero we owe to Our Lady of Lourdes. Without her we can do little,” Ferrero said at an event marking the 50th anniversary of the company.
At the end of 2018, the company sold $11.6 billion of chocolates, led by products like Nutella, Ferrero Rocher and Kinder Chocolate and primarily in Germany, Poland, France, Italy, U.K. and the U.S.
The chocolate’s rocky texture resembles the rock grotto in Lourdes, where Mary is believed to have appeared to a 13-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous on Feb. 11, 1858. The word “Rocher” is said to come from the name of the grotto in French — “Rocher de Massabielle.”
St. Bernadette of Lourdes. Creative Common photo.
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Date published: 29/02/2020
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