The Healing Miracles at Lourdes

Bernadette Soubirous was a sickly child born to a large family in extreme poverty.

They lived in Lourdes, a town in the French Pyrenees, in a basement apartment that had once been a dungeon. Bernadette suffered from severe asthma, a disease for which there was no effective treatment at that time.

One day in 1858, while gathering firewood, Bernadette saw light in a natural grotto by a stream near her home. She approached and saw "a small young lady." Eventually, the lady identified herself with a mysterious phrase. She said: "I am the Immaculate Conception."

A simple and barely educated girl of fourteen, Bernadette had no idea what the curious phrase could mean. The lady visited Bernadette eighteen times. Bernadette faithfully returned to the site, again and again, even though the local people mocked her, the police threatened her, and even her parents punished her.

Over time, however, reports of the visions aroused the curiosity of local people, and they began to show up in great crowds. The lady asked that a chapel be built at the site of the apparition. A spring miraculously appeared there, and its waters were found to have curative powers. The Church declared Bernadette's apparitions to be worthy of belief. The chapel was constructed, and Lourdes became one of the most popular pilgrim destinations in the world.

In France, Lourdes is second only to Paris for the number of hotel rooms it provides.

Many who make the pilgrimage to Lourdes have chronic or terminal illnesses.

At the shrine, they have an opportunity to bathe in the waters from the spring Bernadette uncovered at the direction of the Blessed Virgin. Pilgrims have reported cures from cancer, heart disease, infections, injuries, blindness, and infertility. Hundreds of millions have visited since 1858.

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