Erin Fox
The feast of St Bernadette is coming up next week on April 16. She is the patron saint of poverty, illness, piety, shepherds and sheperdesses.
St Bernadette was born in Lourdes, France on January 7, 1844. The first of nine children, she came from a very poor family. As a little girl, Bernadette contracted cholera and suffered from extreme asthma. After this she lived the rest of her life in poor health and was just 35 years of age when she died.
In 1858, when she was just 14 years of age, Bernadette with her younger sister and a friend were out gathering firewood. During this outing, a lady dressed in blue and white appeared to her above a rose bush in a grotto which is now one of the most famous Catholic pilgrimmage sites in the world.
Sign of the cross
The woman made the sign of the cross and took out her ivory and gold rosary beads. Her sister and her friend couldn’t see anything but Bernadette immediately fell to her knees, took out her own rosary beads and began to pray.
Bernadette would return to the grotto and pray to the lady each time. As she was the only one who could see the lady, her family doubted her. In one visit she had a vision in which she was told to drink the water of the spring, wash in it and eat the herb that grew there.
Bernadette did so and the next day the fresh clear water flowed from the grotto. In another vision, Bernadette was told that a chapel should be built there and a procession formed. In her 16th vision, Bernadette asked the lady her name several times and the lady replied: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
Initially, people doubted Bernadette’s claims and it wasn’t until 1862 that the Church authorities confirmed her claims as the truth.
After she caused the spring to flow, 69 miracles have been recorded since.
Bernadette received much attention following the miracles of the spring. Yet she chose to withdraw from this attention and lived a humble life until she died from tuberculosis on April 16 in 1879 as she lay on her death bed praying the rosary.
She was beatified in 1925 and canonised by Pope Pius XI in December 1933.