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Bernadette of Lourdes
Nun and Visionary
d. 16 April 1879
Marie Bernarde ("Bernadette") Soubirous was born in 1844, the first of six
children of a miller whose family lived in extreme poverty.replica watches She was malnourished when
young, and ailing and asthmatic throughout her life. As a child, she was cheerful and
pleasant, but was generally considered backward.
Between 11 February and 16 July in 1858, when she was fourteen, she is said to have had a series of remarkable experiences in a shallow cave near a spot where she and two companions had gone to gather sticks for firewood. On eighteen occasions she saw a lady who identified herself as the Virgin Mary and gave her a message for the world. The content of the message was an exhortation to prayer and penitence. The lady pointed out a spring of water and told her to drink from it. The spring now produces about 13 litres a minute, and pilgrims come from all over the world to bathe in its waters, to pray, and to seek healing from various ailments. A committee of doctors (not all of them Roman Catholic) investigates reports of healings that are claimed to be miraculous, and publishes accounts of those that seem most noteworthy.
Bernadette's reports of her visions subjected her to much skepticism, and to much curiosity. She retired to a convent, at first as a visitor, taking formal vows as a nun in 1866, and dying 16 April 1879, after a life of chronic illness patiently borne. (She was urged to go to Lourdes and ask for healing at the shrine that had been built in response to her visions there; but she said that the healings there were for others, not for her, and that her business was to bear her illness.)
The best known English account is the novel The Song Of Bernadette, by Franz Werfel (1942), later made into a film. Its historical accuracy has been questioned by B. Lebbe in The Soul Of Bernadette (1947).
Acknowledgements:
Text adapted from James Kiefer's Christian Biographies
Image from Lourdes
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