St. Bernadette Soubirous

Marie-Bernarde Soubirous was born on 7 January 1844 at the mill of Boly in Lourdes, eldest child of François, a miller, and Louise Castérot. When the mill failed, the family lived in a former jail, the cachot, on the rue des Petits Fossés. She was fourteen, asthmatic, behind in her catechism, speaking the valley dialect better than French, when the lady came to Massabielle on 11 February 1858. Eighteen times, from that day to 16 July. A spring from mud. Penance. A chapel. A procession. A name she did not understand and carried down the street so she would not drop it: I am the Immaculate Conception. Then the police, the bishop, the crowds. She made her First Communion on 3 June 1858. She did not take money. She did not sell the water.

In 1866 she entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers, seven hundred kilometres from the grotto, as Sister Marie-Bernard. Kitchen, infirmary, a broom. Mother Vauzou was hard on her. Tuberculosis of the knee followed the asthma. She said she was a broom they put behind the door when they were finished. She did not claim new visions. She died on 16 April 1879, at thirty-five, still ill, saying the Hail Mary as a poor sinner, and of the pain: All this is good for Heaven. The lady had not promised to make her happy in this world.

Three times the Church opened the coffin — 1909, 1919, 1925. The doctors found the body intact. A light wax covers the face and hands you see now, applied in 1925 so that discoloured skin under glass would not be mistaken for corruption. The wax is not the sign. The sign is the reports written before the wax existed. She was beatified in 1925 and canonized on 8 December 1933, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. Feast: 16 April. She is the patron of people who would rather the vision had happened to someone else, and of people who are not healed.