Bernadette Soubirous

Saint Bernadette Soubirous was born on January 7, 1844, in Lourdes, in the French Pyrenees, the eldest daughter of a poor miller’s family. Frail from childhood and often sick with asthma, she grew up in hardship so severe that her family lived in a single-room former jail. At fourteen, while gathering firewood near the grotto of Massabielle, Bernadette began to receive a series of eighteen apparitions between February 11 and July 16, 1858. She described a “young lady” who called for prayer and penance, asked that a chapel be built, and directed her to a spring whose waters soon drew countless pilgrims. In the sixteenth apparition the lady identified herself as “the Immaculate Conception,” a title that deeply confirmed the Church’s faith in Mary’s grace. After careful investigation, the apparitions were declared worthy of belief, and Lourdes became a great shrine of healing and hope. In 1866 Bernadette entered the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, living humbly until her death on April 16, 1879. Her feast day is April 16.