Our Lady of Lourdes

Our Lady of Lourdes refers to a series of eighteen apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary to a poor and sickly fourteen-year-old girl, St. Bernadette Soubirous, at a grotto by the river near the town of Lourdes in the south of France, between 11 February and 16 July 1858. To the simple, unlettered Bernadette the Lady appeared as a young woman of surpassing beauty, who called for prayer and penance for the conversion of sinners and asked that a chapel be built and processions held.

When Bernadette asked her name, the Lady replied, "I am the Immaculate Conception," words the girl did not understand but faithfully repeated, and which confirmed the dogma the pope had solemnly defined only four years before. At the Virgin's bidding Bernadette uncovered a spring at the grotto, whose waters have since been associated with countless reported healings, some rigorously examined and declared miraculous by the Church. Lourdes became one of the greatest pilgrimage shrines in the world, a place of prayer and hope especially for the sick. The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is kept on 11 February.