Lourdes, Apparitions At

Abstract According to the records, Bernadette Soubirous, age 14, shepherdess, began to receive 18 visions of what she described as a girl dressed in white on February 11, 1858. The apparitions at Massabieille, near the river Gave de Pau which flows by the city of Lourdes, would continue until July 16. The vision would identify herself: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The visions of Mary Immaculate were not shared with her companions, whom Bernadette at first had believed saw the same sight. But the visions belonged to her alone, though they would quickly be rent from her control. Successive investigations of her truthfulness in relating the accounts gradually moved from dubiousness to belief. Local townspeople, civil, and ecclesiastical authorities all made the visions an object of their concern, drawing hundreds and then thousands — both for spiritual and economic reasons. Nearly four years after the experience, Bernadette's visions were authenticated by the local Bishop of Tarbes, Bertrand‐Sévère Laurence. Bernadette Soubirous entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers and died on Easter Day, 1879, aged 35. One of the miracles used for her canonization (1939) was the incorruptibility of her body postmortem. Within a decade after her visions ceased, local officials approved massive railroad construction projects in anticipation of making Lourdes a shrine and a major pilgrimage destination. The “chapel” which the Virgin asked for has become an elaborate complex in order to accommodate as many sick pilgrims as possible, many of which are bedridden. Today the Lourdes shrine gathers around 5 million pilgrims annually. There have been 67 thoroughly documented miraculous cures related to the shrine's baths, which are fed by natural springs. These cures are given approbation by the local bishop and are considered inexplicable by the Medical Bureau of the Sanctuary and the International Medical Committee of Lourdes.