Bernadette Soubirous

About Bernadette Soubirous

Bernadette Soubirous was a poor, sickly French girl who experienced eighteen apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes in 1858. Mary identified herself as "the Immaculate Conception" and revealed a healing spring. Despite skepticism and interrogation, Bernadette maintained her testimony. She became a nun and lived humbly, suffering illness until death at 35. Lourdes became one of Christianity's major pilgrimage sites. Canonized 1933.