St. Bernadette Soubirous

Biography

St. Bernadette Soubirous (1844–1879) was born into a desperately poor family in Lourdes, France. She suffered from chronic asthma and was considered slow and uneducated by her peers. On February 11, 1858, while gathering firewood near the grotto of Massabielle, she saw a beautiful Lady dressed in white with a blue sash and golden roses at her feet. Over the next five months, the Lady appeared seventeen more times. During the ninth apparition, the Lady told Bernadette to 'Go and drink at the spring and wash yourself there.' When Bernadette dug in the muddy ground with her bare hands, a spring of water bubbled up — a spring that continues to flow to this day and has been associated with thousands of medically verified healings. On March 25, when Bernadette asked the Lady her name, she replied: 'I am the Immaculate Conception' — a dogma defined by Pope Pius IX just four years earlier, in 1854. Bernadette, who had no theological education, did not even know what the words meant. Despite intense skepticism, interrogation, and attempts to confuse her, Bernadette never once changed her story. She entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers in 1866, where she lived a hidden life of prayer, suffering, and obedience. She died of tuberculosis and bone cancer at age thirty-five. When her body was exhumed in 1909, it was found remarkably incorrupt and can still be seen at the convent in Nevers.

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