FEBRUARY 11

On this date in 1858, a 14-year-old peasant girl, out gathering firewood for her family, came upon an apparition in a grotto or small cave near her home in a little town in France.  Her name was Bernadette Soubirous.  The town is named Lourdes.  She had 17 similar occurrences over the next six months.

According to Bernadette, the vision was of a lady - the lady was Mary the mother of Jesus. The lady called herself the Immaculate Conception and she asked the girl to pray the rosary and have a chapel built on the site. Bernadette was poor, uneducated and sickly.

After the experience, Bernadette could not handle her fame and the complicated life it brought.  She went to a hospice school to learn to read and write and then joined a religious group called the Sisters of Charity and spent the rest of her life working at their hospital.  Bernadette told people that the Virgin Mary chose her because she was the most ignorant of the girls.  She died at the age of 35.

Bernadette Soubrirous was canonized as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church.  Several miracles are accredited to her in her short life including the fact that when her body was exhumed some 40 years after her death it had hardly deteriorated.

A spring of clean water flows near the grotto and church now built there.  The location has been the site of over 70 miracles, unexplained cures, confirmed by independent medical specialists. It is the site of pilgrimage for millions of Christians each year.
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