Saint Bernadette Soubirous

feast day: April 16 (Feb. 18 in France)

about:
- born: 7 January 1844 (Lourdes, Hautes-Pyrénées, France)
- died: 16 April 1879 (aged 35) (Nevers, Nièvre, France)
- Marie Bernarde "Bernadette" Soubirous (Occitan: Bernadeta Sobirós; 7 January 1844 – 16 April 1879) was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, France, and is venerated as a Christian mystic and Saint in the Catholic Church.
- is best known for the Marian apparitions of a "small young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby garbage dump of the cave-grotto at Massabielle where apparitions are said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858. She would later receive recognition when the lady who appeared to her identified herself as the Immaculate Conception.
- Despite initial skepticism from the Catholic Church, Soubirous's claims were eventually declared "worthy of belief" after a canonical investigation, and the Marian apparition is now known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Since her death, Soubirous's body has apparently remained internally incorrupt, but it is not without blemish; during her third exhumation in 1925, the firm of Pierre Imans made light wax coverings for her face and her hands due to the discoloration that her skin had undergone. 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, France) 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 Bernadette Soubirous a Saint of the Catholic Church. Her feast-day was fixed for February 18, the day her Lady promised to make her happy, not in this life, but in the next. The Faithful however give her two more feast-days—April 16, the day of her death, and February 11—the day her Lady stepped from Heaven into her heart.


links/ sources:
- "Bernadette Soubirous" (Wikipedia):
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernadette_Soubirous
- "St. Bernadette Soubirous" (Catholic Online):
   http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=1757
- "Bernadette Soubirous" (Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes):
   http://en.lourdes-france.org/deepen/bernadette-soubirous
-  "Notre-Dame de Lourdes" (Catholic Encyclopedia):
   http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09389b.htm