Bernadette was the daughter of Francois Soubirous, a miller, and was the oldest
of six children, and who for various reasons lived, in acute poverty.
At the age of fourteen in 1858, she experienced in the space of six months a
series of eighteen visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the rock of
Massabielle, Lourdes. The Virgin described herself as 'The Immaculate
Conception', ordered the building of a church, and told Bernadette to drink
from a spring, which from that time until the present day produces 27,000
gallons of water a week.
She was an undersized ailing child who suffered from asthma; her intellectual
equipment was simple and some witnesses thought her stupid. She was subjected
to a series of searching interrogations both by the clergy and by minor state
officials; from all this she emerged with her story unshaken. But she suffered
considerably from publicity and curiosity, eventually in 1866 she joined the
Sisters of Notre-Dame of Nevers, where she spent the rest of her life.
Bernadette was completely cut off from the development of Lourdes as a
pilgrimage centre. The only 'extraordinary' months of her life were those of
the apparitions; before and after, her life was humdrum in the extreme.
She died at the age of thirty-five after much illness heroically borne.
Her feast day is the 16th April.
Written and contributed by Phillip Lloyd.
