Lourdes: The Apparitions and the Healing Spring
Lourdes, the Apparitions and the Healing Spring
Lourdes is one of the greatest Marian shrines in the world, situated in the French Pyrenees. In 1858, Our Lady appeared eighteen times to Bernadette Soubirous, a young shepherdess of 14, in a grotto beside the river Gave. Here she revealed herself as the Immaculate Conception, a dogma proclaimed only four years earlier.
The Apparitions
From February 11 to July 16, 1858, Our Lady appeared to Bernadette. The central messages were: a call to penance, to prayer for sinners, and the indication of a spring of water whose healing properties proved to be extraordinary. The Bishop of Tarbes approved the apparitions in 1862.
The Spring and the Healings
The water of Lourdes has no special chemical properties, yet countless miracles have been documented and examined by the Lourdes Medical Bureau. Since 1858, the Church has officially recognized 70 miracles. More than 7,000 extraordinary cases have been recorded, of which only a minority have been submitted to rigorous investigation.
Bernadette Soubirous
Bernadette was canonized in 1933. Her incorrupt body rests in the chapel of the convent of Nevers, where she lived as a religious of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity. About the apparitions she would say only: “My mission was to make you believe, not to make you understand.”
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Magisterium of the Church
Quod signum fuit apparitionis Beatae Mariae Virginis apud Lourdes: ipsa se appellavit “Immaculata Conceptio”, confirmans dogma a Pio IX definitum.
Pius XII, Enc. Le Pèlerinage de Lourdes (2 iulii 1957)
📚 Literal translation: What was the sign of the apparition of the Blessed Virgin at Lourdes: she herself called herself “the Immaculate Conception”, confirming the dogma defined by Pius IX.
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