Bernadette Soubirous

Nothing is anything more to me; everything is nothing to me, but Jesus: neither things nor persons, neither ideas nor emotions, neither honor nor sufferings. Jesus is for me honor, delight, heart and soul.
St. Bernadette

Saint Bernadette of Lourdes
Born	January 7,1844,Lourdes
Died	April 16 1879, Nevers
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Canonized	1933
Major shrine	Lourdes
Feast	February 18(in France),April 16 (everywhere else)
Patronage	Sick people, poverty, Lourdes,shepherds
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Saint Bernadette Soubirous (January 7 1844 - April 16 1879) was a shepherd girl from the town of Lourdes in southern France. From February to July 1858, she reported eighteen apparitions of "a lady". These claims have been declared "worthy of belief" by the Catholic Church in a canonical investigation. The phenomenon made the town a major site for pilgrimages which attracts millions of Catholics each year. In 1933 she was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church.

Bernadette's early life

Bernadette was the daughter of François Soubirous, a miller, and his wife Louise, a laundress. She was the eldest of six children. Hard times had fallen on rural France and the family lived in extreme poverty. Neighbors reported that the family lived in unusual harmony, apparently relying on their love and support for one another and their religious devotion. All the family members sought what employment they could. Bernadette did farm work, notably sheep herding, for a family friend in nearby Bartrès, and also waited tables in her Aunt Bernarde's tavern. She returned to Lourdes in January 1858 to attend the free school run by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction so she could finish learning the Catechism so as to receive her first Holy Communion. Her difficulties in school were attributed at the time to simple-mindedness, and in later hagiographies used to illustrate her innocence; but since all classes were taught in classic French rather than the local Gascon, it is likely Bernadette was not the only student with learning problems.

Visions and miracles

On 11 February 1858, aged 14, while she was out gathering firewood with her sister and a friend at the grotto of Massabielle outside Lourdes, Bernadette claimed to see the first of 18 visions of what she termed "a small young lady" standing in a niche in the rock. The other girls stated that they saw nothing. The apparition supposedly did not identify herself until the 17th vision, and until then Bernadette called her simply 'Aquero' ('it' in the local dialect).

As Bernadette later reported to her family and to church and civil investigators, at the ninth visitation the lady supposedly told Bernadette to drink from the spring that flowed under the rock. Although there was no known spring there, and the ground was hard and dry, Bernadette assumed the "lady" meant that the spring was underground. She did as she was told and dug into the dirt, and a small puddle appeared. The spring began to flow a day or so later. Soon the spring was a recorded twelve feet high. The water of the spring does not contain any special chemical compounds that would make it alone capable of producing the cures associated with it; moreover, the Lourdes Bureau, the official medical board made up of both Catholic and atheist physicians, states that most reported cures take place during or after the Blessing of the Eucharist procession rather than after bathing or drinking.

In the 145 years since Bernadette dug up the spring, about 70 cures have been "verified" by the Lourdes Bureau as "inexplicable" (not "miraculous"), but only after what the Church claims are "extremely rigorous scientific and medical examinations" fail to find any other explanation. Bernadette herself said that it was faith and prayer that cured the sick.

The other contents of Bernadette's claimed visions were simple, and focused on the need for prayer and penance. However, at the supposed thirteenth apparition on March 2nd, Bernadette told her family that the lady had said "Please go to the priests and tell them that a chapel is to be built here. Let processions come hither." Accompanied by two of her aunts, Bernadette duly went to parish priest Father Dominique Peyramale with the request. A brilliant but often roughspoken man with little belief in claims of visions and miracles, Peyramale told Bernadette that the lady must identify herself. Bernadette said that on her next visitation she repeated the Father's words to the lady, but that the lady bowed a little, smiled and said nothing.

Her sixteenth, which she claimed went for over an hour, was supposedly on March 25 1858. During this supposed vision, the second of two "miracles of the candle" was said to have occurred. Bernadette was holding a lighted candle; during the vision it burned down, and the flame was said to be in direct contact with her skin for over 15 minutes but she supposedly showed no sign of experiencing any pain or injury. This was claimed to be witnessed by many people present, including the town physician, Dr. Pierre Romaine Dozous, who timed and later documented it. According to his report, there was no sign that her skin was in any way affected, so he monitored Bernadette closely but did not intervene. After her "vision" ended, the doctor said that he examined her hand but found no evidence of any burning, and that she was completely unaware of what had been happening. The doctor then said that he briefly applied a lighted candle to her hand, and she reacted immediately. It is unclear if observers other than Dozous were sufficiently close witness if the candle was continuously in contact with Bernadette’s skin.

Further visions and miracles

According to Bernadette's account, during that same visitation she'd again asked the lady her name but she just smiled back. She repeated the question a further three times, and finally heard the lady say, in the local dialect, "I am the Immaculate Conception". Four years earlier, Pope Pius IX had promulgated the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception; that of all human beings who have ever lived, Mary the mother of Jesus was born without the stain of original sin. However this was not well known to Catholics at large at that time, being generally confined to discussion amongst the clergy. It certainly was not an expression known to a simple undereducated peasant girl who could barely read. Her parents, teachers and priests all later testified that she had never previously heard the words 'immaculate conception' from them. One has to take their word for that. She could easily have overheard it from visiting priests or other educated local people or visitors. If Bernadette had heard of the idea at all (she did own a Miraculous Medal) she probably thought, as most people did and still do, that "conceived without sin" in the Medal's prayer referred to the Virgin Birth. She may have similarly assumed that the words she heard, "I am the Immaculate Conception", referred to the virgin birth.

Bernadette was a sickly child; she had had cholera in infancy and suffered most of her life from asthma, and some of the people who interviewed her following her revelation of the visions thought her simple-minded. But despite being rigorously interviewed by officials of both the Catholic Church and the French government, she stuck consistently to her story. Her behavior during this period set the example by which all who claim visions and mystical experiences are now judged by Church authorities.

Bernadette's later years

Disliking the attention she was attracting, Bernadette went to the hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction, where she finally learned to read and write. She then joined the Sisters of Charity convent moving into their motherhouse at Nevers at the age of 22. She spent the rest of her brief life there, working as an assistant in the infirmary and later as a sacristan, creating beautiful embroidery for altar cloths and vestments. During a severe asthma attack, she asked for water from the Lourdes spring, and her symptoms subsided, never to return. However, she did not seek healing in this way when she later contracted tuberculosis of the bone in the right knee. She had followed the development of Lourdes as a pilgrimage shrine while she still lived at Lourdes, but was not present for the consecration of the basilica there in 1876. She eventually died of her illness at the age of thirty-five on April 16 1879.

Bernadette's body exhumed

Bishop Gauthey of Nevers and the church exhumed the body of Bernadette Soubirous on September 2, 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the postulators of the cause, two doctors, and a sister of the community. They found that although the crucifix in her hand and the rosary had both oxidized, her body appeared "incorrupt" — preserved from decomposition. They cited this as one of the miracles to support her canonization. They washed and reclothed her body before burial in a new double casket.

The church exhumed the corpse a second time on April 3, 1919. The body still appeared preserved, however, her face was slightly discolored possibly due to the washing process of the first exhumation. In 1925, the church exhumed the body for a third time. They took relics from the body, which were sent to Rome, and sprayed her face with a film of wax. The remains were then placed in a gold and glass reliquary in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the motherhouse in Nevers. The site is visited by many pilgrims.

Canonization as a Catholic saint

She received Beatification in 1925 and Canonization in 1933 under Pope Pius XI, not so much for the content of her visions, but rather for her simplicity and holiness of life. She is the patron saint of sick persons and of Lourdes.

Fictional treatment

Her life was given a fictionalised treatment in Franz Werfel's novel The Song of Bernadette, which was later adapted into a 1943 film of the same name starring Jennifer Jones as Bernadette (and the uncredited Linda Darnell as the Immaculate Conception). Jones won her only Best Actress Oscar for this portrayal. A more recent version of Bernadette's life is presented in the 1988 film by Jean Dellanoy.

References

The Miracle Joint at Lourdes From "Essays " by Woolsey Teller, Copyright 1945 by The Truth Seeker Company, Inc. Critique of the Lourdes story.
Lourdes: In Bernadette's Footsteps, by Father Joseph Bordes, Copyright 2005 by MSM Company - Tells Bernadette's story, and describes the tourism at Lourdes.
The Song of Bernadette Franz Werfel's classic abridged by John Martin

External links

Lourdes and Bernadette Detailed chronology of the apparitions, with many pictures.
Bernadette as she is today
The Body of St. Bernadette--Includes reports of her exhumation and photographs of her body and tomb.
The Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction
Life and Background to Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes

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