In this chair
Established the feast of Christ the King. Canonized Bernadette on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1933. The Vatican City State, 1929.
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Pope Pius the Eleventh
Bishop of Rome, 1922 – 1939
Signs of this pontificate
Wonders this archive keeps that belong to the years he sat, or that he himself stood before.
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 Fátima
Cova da Iria, Fátima1917
In 1917, in a hollow of pasture called the Cova da Iria, near the village of Fátima in Portugal, three shepherd children — Lúcia dos Santos, ten, and her cousins Francisco Marto, nine, and Jacinta Marto, seven — saw a lady brighter than the sun, six times, on the 13th of the month from May to October. She asked for the rosary every day, for the conversion of sinners, for devotion to her Immaculate Heart, and that a chapel be built. On 13 July she showed them hell and spoke of war and of Russia. On 13 October, before a crowd of tens of thousands standing in the rain, including reporters who had come to mock, the sun appeared to dance. Francisco and Jacinta died in the influenza. Lúcia lived until 2005 as a nun. The bishop of Leiria declared the apparitions worthy of belief on 13 October 1930.