St. Bernadette Soubirous


St. Bernadette Soubirous

On February 11th 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a poor teenage girl, went to collect firewood in a grotto filled with debris that had washed up from the nearby river. It was there that she had her first vision of ‘a beautiful lady’. The lady, who later identified herself as “the Immaculate Conception,” instructed her to drink from a spring at that spot which was not visible at the time. In subsequent days, the spring appeared and its waters became a source of healing miracles that continue to this day. Bernadette’s story of this and 17 subsequent apparitions were initially doubted. But today, the town of Lourdes, where the apparitions took place, is an international center of pilgrimage. Bernadette latter became a nun and died in 1879. She was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1933. Biography by Dr. Italy