February 11: On This Day in World History … briefly
14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous said that she had seen the Mother of Christ 18 times in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
1858: Fourteen year-old claims to see Virgin Mary
Saint Bernadette Soubirous, also known as Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes (Lorda in Occitan), in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France and came to be venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church.
She is best known for the Marian apparitions of a ‘young woman’ who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto at Massabielle – apparitions were said to have occurred between February 11 and July 16, 1858. She would later receive recognition when the woman who appeared to her identified herself as the ‘Immaculate Conception’.
Despite initial skepticism from some Church authorities, Soubirous’s claims were eventually declared ‘worthy of belief’ after a canonical investigation, and the Marian apparition became known as ‘Our Lady of Lourdes’. Since her death, Soubirous’s body has apparently remained internally ‘incorrupt, but not without blemish’.
During the third exhumation of her body in 1925, the company Pierre Imans made light wax coverings for her face and her hands because of discolouration that her skin had undergone after her body was cleansed. 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-Pyrénées, from 2016 part of Occitanie) 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 Soubirous a saint of the Catholic Church. Her feast-day, initially specified as 18 February 18 — the day that was promised to make her happy, not in this life, but in the next — is now observed in most places on the date of her death, April 16.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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