Bernadette Soubirous

Marie Bernarde "Bernadette" Soubirous (Occitan: Bernadeta SobirÃ³s; 7 January 1844Â â€" 16 April 1879) was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, France, and is venerated as a Christian mystic and Saint in the Catholic Church.

Soubirous is best known for the Marian apparitions of a "small young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby garbage dump of the cave-grotto at Massabielle where apparitions are said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858. She would later receive recognition when the lady who appeared to her identified herself as the Immaculate Conception.

Despite initial skepticism from the Catholic Church, Soubirous's claims were eventually declared "worthy of belief" after a canonical investigation, and the Marian apparition is now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Since her death, Soubirous's body has apparently remained internally incorrupt, but it is not without blemish; during her third exhumation in 1925, the firm of Pierre Imans made light wax coverings for her face and her hands due to the discoloration that her skin had undergone. These masks were placed on her face and hands before she was moved to her crystal reliquary in June 1925.

The Marian shrine at Lourdes (Midi-PyrÃ©nÃ©es, France) went on to become a major pilgrimage site, attracting over five million pilgrims of all denominations each year.

On December 8, 1933, Pope Pius XI declared Bernadette Soubirous a Saint of the Catholic Church. Her feast-day was fixed for February 18, the day her Lady promised to make her happy, not in this life, but in the next. The Faithful however give her two more feast-daysâ€"April 16, the day of her death, and February 11â€"the day her Lady stepped from Heaven into her heart.

Early stages of her life

Bernadette (the sobriquet by which she was universally known) was the daughter of FranÃ§ois Soubirous (FrancÃ©s SobirÃ³s in Occitan) (1807â€"1871), a miller, and Louise (LoÃ¯sa CasterÃ²t in Occitan) (1825â€"1866), a laundress. She was the eldest of nine childrenâ€"Bernadette, Jean (born and died 1845), Toinette (1846â€"1892), Jean-Marie (1848â€"1851), Jean-Marie (1851â€"1919), Justin (1855â€"1865), Pierre (1859â€"1931), Jean (born and died 1864), and a baby named Louise who died soon after her birth (1866).

Bernadette was born on 7 January 1844 and baptized at the local parish church, St. Pierre's, on 9 January, her parents' wedding anniversary. Bernadette's godmother was Bernarde Casterot, her mother's sister, a moderately wealthy widow who owned a tavern. Hard times had fallen on France and the family lived in extreme poverty. Bernadette was a sickly child. She contracted cholera as a toddler and suffered severe asthma for the rest of her life. Bernadette attended the day school conducted by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction from Nevers.

Visions

By the time of the events at the grotto, her family's financial and social status had declined to the point where they lived in a one-room basement, formerly used as a jail, called le cachot, "the dungeon," where they were housed for free by her mother's cousin, Andre Sajoux.

On 11 February 1858, Bernadette, then aged 14, was out gathering firewood with her sister Marie and a friend near the grotto of Massabielle (Tuta de Massavielha) when she experienced her first vision. As she recounted later, while the other girls crossed the little stream in front of the grotto and walked on, Bernadette stayed behind, looking for a place to cross where she wouldn't get her stockings wet. She finally sat down to take her shoes off in order to cross the water and was lowering her stocking when she heard the sound of rushing wind, but nothing moved. A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, however, did move. From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, "came a dazzling light, and a white figure." This was the first of 18 visions of what she referred to as aquero (pronounced [aËˆk(e)É¾É"]), Gascon Occitan for "that". In later testimony, she called it "a small young lady" (uo petito damizelo). Her sister and her friend stated that they had seen nothing.

On 14 February, after Sunday Mass, Bernadette, with her sister Marie and some other girls, returned to the grotto. Bernadette knelt down immediately, saying she saw aquero again and falling into a trance. When one of the girls threw holy water at the niche and another threw a rock from above that shattered on the ground, the apparition disappeared. On her next visit, 18 February, she said that "the vision" asked her to return to the grotto every day for a fortnight.

This period of almost daily visions came to be known as la Quinzaine sacrÃ©e, "holy fortnight." Initially, her parents, especially her mother, were embarrassed and tried to forbid her to go. The supposed apparition did not identify herself until the seventeenth vision. Although the townspeople who believed she was telling the truth assumed she saw the Virgin Mary, Bernadette never claimed it to be Mary, consistently using the word aquero. She described the lady as wearing a white veil, a blue girdle and with a yellow rose on each footÂ â€" compatible with "a description of any statue of the Virgin in a village church".

Bernadette's story caused a sensation with the townspeople, who were divided in their opinions on whether or not Bernadette was telling the truth. Some believed her to have a mental illness and demanded she be put in an asylum.

The other contents of Bernadette's reported visions were simple and focused on the need for prayer and penance. On 25 February she explained that the vision had told her "to drink of the water of the spring, to wash in it and to eat the herb that grew there," as an act of penance. To everyone's surprise, the next day the grotto was no longer muddy but clear water flowed. On 2 March, at the thirteenth of the alleged apparitions, Bernadette told her family that the lady said that "a chapel should be built and a procession formed".

Her 16th claimed vision, which she stated went on for over an hour, was on 25 March. According to Bernadette's account, during that visitation, she again asked the woman for her name but the lady just smiled back. She repeated the question three more times and finally heard the lady say, in Gascon Occitan, "I am the Immaculate Conception" (QuÃ© soÃ¯ era immaculado councepcioÅ©, a phonetic transcription of Que soi era immaculada concepcion).

Some of the people who interviewed her after her revelation of the visions thought her simple-minded. However, despite being rigorously interviewed by officials of both the Catholic Church and the French government, she stuck consistently to her story.

Results of her visions

After thorough investigation Church authorities confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions in 1862. In the 150 years since Bernadette dug up the spring, 69 cures have been verified by the Lourdes Medical Bureau as "inexplicable" â€" after what the Church claims are "extremely rigorous scientific and medical examinations" that failed to find any other explanation. The Lourdes Commission that examined Bernadette after the visions ran an intensive analysis on the water and found that, while it had a high mineral content, it contained nothing out of the ordinary that would account for the cures attributed to it. Bernadette said that it was faith and prayer that cured the sick.

Her request to the local priest to build a chapel at the site of her visions eventually gave rise to a number of chapels and churches at Lourdes. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is now one of the major Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world. One of the churches built at the site, the Basilica of St. Pius X, can accommodate 25,000 people and was dedicated by the future Pope John XXIII when he was the Papal Nuncio to France. Close to 5 million pilgrims from all over the world visit Lourdes (population of about 15,000) every year.

Later years

Disliking the attention she was attracting, Bernadette went to the hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers where she finally learned to read and write. Although she considered joining the Carmelites, her health precluded her entering any of the strict contemplative orders. On 29 July 1866, with 42 other candidates, she took the religious habit of a postulant and joined the Sisters of Charity at their motherhouse at Nevers. The Mother Superior at the time gave her the name Marie-Bernarde in honor of her godmother who was named "Bernarde".

She spent the rest of her brief life there, working as an assistant in the infirmary and later as a sacristan, creating beautiful embroidery for altar cloths and vestments. She later contracted tuberculosis of the bone in her right knee. She had followed the development of Lourdes as a pilgrimage shrine while she still lived at Lourdes, but was not present for the consecration of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception there in 1876.

For several months prior to her death, she was unable to take an active part in convent life. She eventually died of her long-term illness at the age of 35 on 16 April 1879. On her deathbed, as she suffered from severe pain and in keeping with the Virgin Mary's admonition of "Penance, Penance, Penance," Bernadette proclaimed that "all this is good for Heaven!" Her final words were, "Blessed Mary, Mother of God, pray for me! A poor sinner, a poor sinner-" Bernadette's body was laid to rest in the Saint Gildard Convent.

Sainthood

Bernadette Soubirous was declared venerable by Pope Pius X, and "Blessed" on 14 June 1925, by Pope Pius XI. She was officially canonized a Saint by Pope Pius XI on 8 December 1933. At the end of the Solemn Mass celebrated by Pope Pius XI, the crowd spontaneously intoned the singing of the "Ave Maria" of Lourdes as it is sung in the Sanctuary of Lourdes.

Exhumations

Bishop Gauthey of Nevers and the Church exhumed the body of Bernadette Soubirous on 22 September 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the postulators of the cause, two doctors and a sister of the community. They claimed that although the crucifix in her hand and her rosary had both oxidized, her body appeared incorruptÂ â€" preserved from decomposition. This was cited as one of the miracles to support her canonization. They washed and reclothed her body before burial in a new double casket. The Church exhumed the corpse a second time on 3 April 1919. A doctor who examined the body noted, "The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts. ...Â The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body."

In 1925, the church exhumed the body for a third time. They took relics, which were sent to Rome. A precise imprint of the face was molded so that the firm of Pierre Imans in Paris could make a wax mask based on the imprints and on some genuine photos to be placed on her body. This was common practice for relics in France as it was feared that the blackish tinge to the face and the sunken eyes and nose would make an unpleasant impression on the public. Imprints of the hands were also taken for the presentation of the body and the making of wax casts. The remains were then placed in a gold and crystal reliquary in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the mother house in Nevers.

Three years later in 1928, Doctor Comte published a report on the exhumation of Blessed Bernadette in the second issue of the Bulletin de I'Association medicale de Notre-Dame de Lourdes.

"I would have liked to open the left side of the thorax to take the ribs as relics and then remove the heart which I am certain must have survived. However, as the trunk was slightly supported on the left arm, it would have been rather difficult to try and get at the heart without doing too much noticeable damage. As the Mother Superior had expressed a desire for the Saint's heart to be kept together with the whole body, and as Monsignor the Bishop did not insist, I gave up the idea of opening the left-hand side of the thorax and contented myself with removing the two right ribs which were more accessible." "What struck me during this examination, of course, was the state of perfect preservation of the skeleton, the fibrous tissues of the muscles (still supple and firm), of the ligaments, and of the skin, and above all the totally unexpected state of the liver after 46 years. One would have thought that this organ, which is basically soft and inclined to crumble, would have decomposed very rapidly or would have hardened to a chalky consistency. Yet, when it was cut it was soft and almost normal in consistency. I pointed this out to those present, remarking that this did not seem to be a natural phenomenon."

In media

In 1909 the French short movie Bernadette Soubirous et les Apparitions de Lourdes, directed by HonorÃ© Le Sablais, is the first attempt to tell with the new cinematographic art the story of Bernadette, according to RAI 3 documentary Lourdes. La storia.

In 1929 the French film La vie merveilleuse de Bernadette directed by Georges Pallu and starring Alexandra as Bernadette.

In 1935 the Portuguese Georges Pallu directed La Vierge du rocher ("The Virgin of the Rock") with Micheline Masson in the role of Bernadette.

Bernadette's life was given a fictionalized treatment in Franz Werfel's novel, The Song of Bernadette, which was later adapted into a 1943 film of the same name starring Jennifer Jones as Bernadette and the uncredited Linda Darnell as the Immaculate Conception. Jones won the Best Actress Oscar for this portrayal.

In 1961 DaniÃ©le Ajoret portrayed Bernadette in Bernadette of Lourdes (French title: Il suffit d'aimer or Love is Enough) of Gilbert CresbÃ³n.

Cristina GalbÃ³ portrayed Aquella joven de blanco (A Little Maiden in White), Spain, 1965, directed by LeÃ³n Klimovsky.

In 1967 a French TV movie L'affaire Lourdes directed by Marcel Bluwal and starring Marie-HÃ©lÃ¨ne Breillat as Bernadette.

In 1981 Andrea del Boca portrayed Bernadette in a homonymous Argentine television mini-series directed by her father NicolÃ¡s del Boca (4 episodes of 1 hour each).

Bernadette in 1988 and La Passion de Bernadette (The Passion of Bernadette) in 1989 by Jean Delannoy, starring Sydney Penny in the lead role.

In 1990 Fernando Uribe and Steven Hahn directed a short animated film, Bernadette: La Princesa de Lourdes, produced by John Williams and Jorge Gonzalez, available in English since 1991 with the title Bernadette â€" The Princess of Lourdes.

AngÃ¨le Osinsky portrayed Saint Bernadette in the Italian TV movie Lourdes, 2000, by Lodovico Gasparini.

In 2011 a French film Je m'appelle Bernadette directed by Jean Sagols and starring Katia Cuq (Katia Miran).

Anne Murray sings the "Song of Bernadette"

Notes and references

Bibliography

Sadler, Anna T. The Wonders of Lourdes, (1875)
Clarke, SJ, Richard. Lourdes: Its Inhabitants, Its Pilgrims, and Its Miracles, (1888)
Keyes, Frances Parkinson. Bernadette of Lourdes (1955)
Laurentin, Rene. Visage de Bernadette, Lourdes (1978), (French)
Bernadette of Lourdes, St. Gildard, Nevers, France, (1926)
Annales de Notre Dame de Lourdes (Missionaries of the Immaculate Conception), Lourdes 1871 (French)
The Wonders of Massabielle at Lourdes (Rev. S. Pruvost), 1925
Notre Dame de Lourdes (Henri Lasserre), Paris 1870 (French)
Bernadette (Henri Lasserre), Paris 1879 (year of Bernadette's death), (French)
Our Lady of Lourdes (Henri Lasserre), June 1906 (English)
The Miracle Joint at Lourdes From "Essays " by Woolsey Teller, Copyright 1945 by The Truth Seeker Company, Inc. Critique of the Lourdes story.
Our Lady of Lourdes (Henri Lasserre), 1875 (English)
La Sainte Vierge a Lourdes, 1877 (French)
Das Lied von Bernadette (Franz Werfel), 1953 (German)
The Happening at Lourdes (Alan Neame), 1967
Lourdes (Ruth Harris), 1999
After Bernadette (Don Sharkey), 1945
And I Shall Be Healed (Edeltraud Fulda), 1960
Saint Bernadette (Margaret Trouncer), 1964
A Queen's Command (Anna Kuhn), 1947
Bernadette (Marcelle Auclair), 1958
A Holy Life: St. Bernadette of Lourdes (Patricia McEachern), 2005
The Story of Bernadette (Rev. J. Lane), 1997
The Wonder of Lourdes (John Oxenham), 1926
Lourdes (Ã‰mile Zola), 1895 (German)
Bernadette Speaks: A Life of Saint Bernadette Soubirous in Her Own Words, RenÃ© Laurentin, Pauline Books and Media, 2000.
St. Bernadette (Leonard Von Matt / Francis Trochu), 1957
Bernadette of Lourdes (J.H. Gregory), 1914 (1st U.S. book)
Lourdes (Ã‰mile Zola), 2000 (English)
The Miracle of Bernadette (Margaret Gray Blanton), 1958
My Witness, Bernadette (J.B. Estrade), 1951
St. Bernadette Soubirous: 1844â€"1879, by Abbe Francois Trochu, TAN Books and Publishers, Inc., 1957.
We Saw Her (B.G. Sandhurst), 1953
Werfel, Franz. The Song of Bernadette, 1942

Magazines and articles

"L'Illustration Journal Universal": Story covering Bernadette and apparitions from time of apparitions (23 October 1858)
"The London Illustrated News": The Election of Pope Pius XI (11 February 1922)
"L'Opinion Publique": The Funeral of Pope Pius IX (14 March 1878)
"The Illustrated London News": The Conclave & Election of the Pope (9 March 1878)
"The Graphic": With the Lourdes Pilgrims (7 October 1876)
"Harpers Weekly": French Pilgrims â€" Romish Superstitions (16 November 1872)
"The Graphic": A Trip to the Pyrenees (12 October 1872)
"Harpers Weekly": The Last French Miracle (20 November 1858) â€" Recounts actual happenings at the time of apparitions
"St. Paul Dispatch": Throne of St. Peter Made Vacant by the Death of Pope Leo XIII, (21 July 1903)
"St. Paul Dispatch": Cardinal Sarto (St. Pope Pius X) of Venice Called to Throne of St. Peter, (5 August 1903)
"The Minneapolis Journal": Pope Pius X is Reported Dead; Relapse Caused by Grief Over War (19 August 1914)

External links

The Body of St. Bernadetteâ€"Includes reports of her exhumation and photographs of her body and tomb.
Notes on the Investigation, including facsimile of notes taken during an interview with Bernadette
Catholic Encyclopedia: Notre-Dame de Lourdes
"Bernadette Soubirous". Find a Grave. Retrieved 11 August 2010.Â
Sanctuaires Notre-Dame de Lourdes

Bernadette Soubirous

Tuesday, May 19, 2015