By Simon Caldwell
Last updated at 9:01 PM on 24th September 2008

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, was today branded a ‘papal puppet’ after he became the first leader of the Church of England to accept visions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes as historical fact.

He asserted that 18 visions of Our Lady allegedly experienced by Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 were true.

His words shocked millions of Protestants worldwide because they not only signified a break with Protestant teaching on the Virgin Mary but also Dr Williams’s personal acceptance of the Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which is explicitly linked to the apparitions.

The archbishop made his remarks during a three-day visit to the shrine in the French Pyrenees - the first ever by a leader of the Church of England.

In a homily he preached at an international Mass there, Dr Williams spoke about the apparitions without any qualifications.

‘When Mary came to Bernadette, she came at first as an anonymous figure, a beautiful lady, a mysterious “thing”, not yet identified as the Lord’s spotless mother,” Dr Williams said.

‘And Bernadette – uneducated, uninstructed in doctrine – leapt with joy, recognising that here was life, here was healing,’ he said.

‘Only bit by bit does Bernadette find the words to let the world know; only bit by bit, we might say, does she discover how to listen to the Lady and echo what she has to tell us.’

He also praised the lives of the saints, another devotion seen as distinctively Roman Catholic.

‘It may be when we encounter a person in whom we sense that the words we rather half-heartedly use about God are a living and actual reality,’ he said.

‘That’s why the lives of the saints, ancient and modern, matter so much.’

Afterwards he was severely criticised by the Protestant Truth Society, a group of Anglicans and nonconformists committed to upholding the ideals of the Protestant Reformation.

The Rev Jeremy Brooks, director of ministry for the group, said: 'All true Protestants will be appalled that the Archbishop of Canterbury has visited Lourdes, and preached there.

‘Lourdes represents everything about Roman Catholicism that the Protestant Reformation ejected, including apparitions, mariolatry and the veneration of saints.

Lourdes is a magnet for Roman Catholics who make the pilgrimage to the site from all over Europe

‘The archbishop's simple presence there is a wholesale compromise, and his sermon which included a reference to Mary as “the Mother of God” is a complete denial of Protestant orthodoxy.’

He added: ‘At a time when our country is crying out for clear Biblical leadership, it is nothing short of tragic that our supposedly Protestant archbishop is behaving as little more than a papal puppet.’

The archbishop’s pilgrimage comes just a week after Pope Benedict XVI made his own pilgrimage to the shrine.

He was invited to the shrine by Jacques Perrier, the Catholic Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes.

Dr Williams was joined there by the German Cardinal Walter Kasper, the president of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity, who celebrated the international Mass.

He was also joined by an unprecedented pilgrimage of 10 Church of England bishops, some 60 Anglican priests and about 400 Anglican lay worshippers, a number of whom are considering becoming Catholics in protest at the decision of the General Synod in July to pave the way for the creation of women bishops.

The presence of the Archbishop of Canterbury indicates that mainstream Anglican and Catholic leaders remain committed to closer relations in spite of differences over the ordination of women and sexually-active gay men as priests and bishops.

Lourdes became the most popular shrine in Europe after Bernadette, who was later canonised, said she had seen a vision of a beautiful woman who described herself as the Immaculate Conception.

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, formalised by the Catholic Church in the 19th century, holds that the Virgin Mary was conceived in a state of grace which kept her unstained from sin.

The apparition told Bernadette to dig for a spring to which many people would come for healing.