St. Bernadette Soubirous
Patron of the sick, the poor, and those ridiculed for their faith
- Feast day
- April 16
- Origin
- Lourdes, France
- Era
- 19th century
- Order
- Sisters of Charity of Nevers
- Canonised
- 1933
About the saint
Bernadette Soubirous was born in 1844 in Lourdes to a family so poor they lived in a disused jail. Asthmatic, illiterate and unable to speak French well, she was fourteen when, gathering firewood at the grotto of Massabielle in 1858, she saw a young woman who over eighteen apparitions asked for prayer and penance and identified herself as "the Immaculate Conception."
She was interrogated by police, doctors and clergy and never changed her account. A spring uncovered at the grotto at the Lady''s instruction still flows, and Lourdes became the most visited healing shrine in the world.
She joined the Sisters of Charity at Nevers, said she was "good for nothing," and died at thirty-five in 1879.
Documented miracles
The spring at Massabielle
She dug in the mud at the Lady's instruction and uncovered a spring that still flows and is used by pilgrims.
Lourdes, February 1858
The approved cures at Lourdes
Seventy cures have been declared medically inexplicable by the Lourdes Medical Bureau and recognised by the Church.
Lourdes, 1858–present
Incorrupt body
Her body was exhumed three times, most recently in 1925, and found substantially intact; it lies at Nevers.
Nevers, 1909–1925