Saint Bernadette Soubirous

Bernadette Soubirous was born in Lourdes on January 7, 1844, in the Boly mill that her parents ran. She was baptized two days later, on François and Louise’s first wedding anniversary. After her came six more children, and three died young. Then the crisis in French farming hit that family too. They lost the mill and ended up living in what had been the town jail, the cachot: a damp room no one wanted to use anymore, not even for prisoners. Bernadette had asthma, couldn’t read, and didn’t speak French, only the Occitan of the valley. On February 11, 1858, while gathering wood at the grotto of Massabielle, she said she had seen a lady dressed in white. There were eighteen apparitions, between February and July. She was questioned by the police commissioner, the prosecutor, the parish priest, the doctors: they called her crazy, a liar, somebody’s puppet. She always repeated the same thing, without adding anything and without leaving anything out. In 1866 she entered the Sisters of Charity of Nevers and never went back to Lourdes. She wanted nothing to do with what was meanwhile becoming the sanctuary. When her fellow sisters asked, she answered that her task had been “to tell it, not to make people believe it.” She died in Nevers on April 16, 1879, at thirty-five, of tuberculosis of the bone. Pius XI proclaimed her a saint in 1933. Today Lourdes is one of the most visited places of pilgrimage in the world. If your name is Bernadette, today is your name day.