“Tsk, tsk. What is the problem with that poor, ignorant girl who claims that the Blessed Mother has appeared to her?”
Poor Bernadette, indeed. The uneducated French peasant who first reported visions of Mary in Lourdes, France, in 1858, was disbelieved by clergy and dismissed by townspeople. But she wasn’t shaken. She insisted that Mary had appeared to her 18 times over six months. And, she reported, the Blessed Mother identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, a title given to Mary by Pope Pius IX only four years earlier.
According to young Bernadette, Mary called for the conversion of sinners through penance. She also urged people to visit the place of the apparitions and asked that a church be built on the site. Since then, millions of people have bathed in the springs at Lourdes and many have reported miraculous healings.
Bernadette joined the Sisters of Notre Dame at Nevers. There she lived as Sister Maria Bernarda until her death in 1879 at age 35. She was canonized in 1933.