The pilgrimage
Why this road exists
To see the body the Church has shown since 1925, and to pray without the crowds of the grotto.
Nevers
Space Bernadette — the body of St. Bernadette
The seer of Lourdes lies in a glass casket in the convent where she hid. You go to look at the girl who did not want to be looked at — and to finish the Lourdes story in the silence she chose.
NeversFeast 16 April
The signs of this place
The apparition, the Gospel sign, the body, the image — whatever this place is known for, told as a file of its own.
SaintChurch-approved
The Body of St. Bernadette
NeversDied 1879; exhumed 1909, 1919, 1925
Bernadette Soubirous died at thirty-five in the convent at Nevers, still ill, hidden on purpose. For the cause of her beatification the coffin was opened in 1909, 1919 and 1925. The body was intact. A light wax covers the face and hands now, which the Church does not deny. She lies in the chapel of Saint-Gildard. The girl who asked not to be looked at is looked at by the world.
MarianChurch-approved
Our Lady of Lourdes
Massabielle, Lourdes1858
Between 11 February and 16 July 1858, in a limestone cave on the edge of Lourdes that the town used as a rubbish dump, a fourteen-year-old miller’s daughter named Bernadette Soubirous saw a young woman in white eighteen times. The woman spoke the dialect of the valley. She asked for prayer, for penance, for a spring of water, for a chapel, and for a procession. On 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation, she gave a name the child had never been taught: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” The bishop of Tarbes judged the apparitions worthy of belief in 1862. The spring still runs. The sick still come. Bernadette died at thirty-five, still ill, in a convent at Nevers.