Lourdes & St. Bernadette

Bernadette Soubirous was born on the 7th of January, 1844, the eldest of three children. Her father was Francois Soubirous a miller and her mother was Louise Casterot. Bernadette was baptised two days later and was called Marie Bernard. At the time of her birth her parents owned the Boly Mill. Her mother sent Bernadette to be fostered, in Bartres to a family friend Marie Aravant-Langues, where she lived for about sixteen months. Bernadette later loved to return to Bartres to visit her foster parents who regarded her as one of the family.

Misfortune after misfortune came down on the Soubirou family. The Mill was sold over there heads in 1852, and then kicked out in 1854. They went to live in the Laborde home, but in 1855 there was a cholera epidemic in Lourdes and Bernadette caught the disease. She got better, only to discover traces of tuberculosis and asthma.
Her fathers affairs went from bad to worse and the family finally ended up 1857 living in the Cachot, a one roomed hovel which used to be the town jail.

Bernadette was now thirteen years of age and couldn't read or write, this was due to ill health and the family was so poor they couldn't affoard to go to school or catechism classes as she had to stay and look after her yonger brother while her mother went out to work. She had not yet made her first communion. But, poor and ill as she was, she had learned a deep spirit of faith from her parents.
In September 1857 she went to Bartres to help Marie Langues look after her sheep she returned to Lourdes in January 1858. Here, she at least could go to school and perpare for her first communion.

It was from the Cachot in February in February 1858 that Bernadette along with her sister and a friend went to gather firewood at the grotto of Massabielle and saw Our Lady there. This was the first of the apparitions, of which seventeen where to follow.

[Click here for information on the apparitions]
During and after the apparitions the civil authority was strongly opposed to the apparitions and there upmost to stop the enthusiasm of the crowds until the Emperor himself, Napoloen III, ordered the barriers removed and gave people free access to the Grotto. Bernadette was one of the first to come and pray when the barriers came down.

In 1860 she went to stay with the Sisters of Nevers in their Lourdes Hospice and studied there. The priests and bishops remained reserved and cautious concerning the happenings at the Grotto and did what Abbe Peryramale, the Parish Priest of Lourdes at the time of the apparitions, told them not to go to the Grotto but to "Pray and wait". Soon he was convinced and approached the Bishop, Msgr, Laurence, who, on the 8th February, 1862, after a long and detailed canonical enquiry, declared that the Mother of God had really appeared to Bernadette eighteen times at the Grotto of Masabielle in Lourdes.
On the 3rd of July 1866, she went for her last visit to the Grotto before she left to joined the Convent of St. Gildard, in Nevers. She left Lourdes on the 4th of July and arrived in Nevers on the 7th of July, and recieved her veil on the 29th of July. In religion she was given her baptismal name Sr. Marie-Bernard.

She worked in the infirmary in the Convent upto 1873. Then in 1874 she became the sacristan but only for a short time. She became so ill she was confined to the infirmary. Through her suffering, Bernadette loved. She did not become a saint because of seeing Our Lady, but becaused she loved. As she said herself "To love is enough".
Bernadette died on the 16th of April, 1879, at the age of thirty five. She was beatified on the 14th of June, 1925 by Pope Pius XI and on the 8th of December, 1933, was canonised by the same Pope. Her Feast day is on the 18th of February. Her body was resumed three times and and each time it was resumed her body looked like the day it had been buried and on the third time it was decided that she would not be buried, but placed in an air tight glass casket The nuns placed a thin coat of wax to protect her skin. Bernadette can now been seen in the church, at the convent of St. Gildars in Nevers.