Bernadette Soubirous (/ˌbɜːrnəˈdɛt ˌsuːbiˈruː/; French: [bɛʁnadɛt subiʁu]; Occitan: Bernadeta Sobirós [beɾnaˈðetɔ suβiˈɾus]; 7 January 1844 – 16 April 1879), also known as Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes (Lorda in Occitan), in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, and is best known for experiencing apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto.

After a canonical investigation, Soubirous's reports were eventually declared "worthy of belief" on 18 February 1862, and the Marian apparition became known as Our Lady of Lourdes.

[2] The grotto where the apparitions occurred later went on to become a major pilgrimage site and Marian shrine known as the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, attracting around five million pilgrims of all denominations each year.

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

[7] On 11 February 1858, Soubirous, then aged 14, was out gathering firewood with her sister Toinette and a friend near the grotto of Massabielle (Tuta de Massavielha) when she experienced her first vision.

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.

She described the lady as wearing a white veil, a blue girdle and with a yellow rose on each foot – compatible with "a description of any statue of the Virgin in a village church".

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.

[14] As happened later with the 1917 apparitions of Fatima in Portugal,[15] the primordial description of the entity made by Bernadette Soubirous was gradually modified to fit the more familiar Marian iconography images.

The commissioned statue by Joseph Fabisch also failed to capture the extreme beauty and youth of the apparition, and Bernadette commented: "too big, too old".

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.

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.

[20] Disliking the attention she was attracting, Bernadette went to the hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers where she had learned to read and write.

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, the Saint Gildard Convent at Nevers.

"[22] Soubirous spent the rest of her brief life at the motherhouse, working as an assistant in the infirmary[21] and later as a sacristan, creating ornate embroidery for altar cloths and vestments.

Unfortunately, Soubirous's childhood bout of "cholera left [...] [Bernadette] with severe, chronic asthma, and eventually she contracted tuberculosis of the lungs and bones.

[24] In France, her liturgical celebration is an optional memorial and is held on February 18,[25][26] which commemorates Bernadette's third vision – during which the "lady" told her that she does not promise to make her happy in this world, but in the other.

[27] Bishop Gauthey of Nevers and the Catholic Church exhumed the body of 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.

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 be viewed as corruption by the public.

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. [...]

[31] The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes has a few bodily relics which traveled in several European dioceses from 2017 to be exposed for the veneration of people.

[34] In September and October 2022, the relics where exposed in around fifty places in England, Scotland, and Wales, including in the Westminster Cathedral and at the Carfin Lourdes Grotto.

[35][36] The town of Lourdes where Bernadette grew up and had her visions has become a major international pilgrimage site attracting millions of visitors each year.

The sanctuary is reputed for the Lourdes water streaming inside the cave from a spring discovered by Bernadette during the apparitions, which is said to have healing properties, attracting many sick pilgrims.

[38] In the city center of Lourdes, pilgrims can visit the house where Bernadette was born and the room where her family was staying at the time of the apparitions.