16 April: St Bernadette Soubirous

Today is the feast day of St Bernadette Soubirous. Here are 10 things you might not know about her:

1. Her family were very poor. Her father was a miller and her mother a laundress. She was the eldest of nine children, four of which didn't survive to adulthood. At the time Bernadette had her visions, the family was living in a one room basement once used as a prison, because they were given it rent free by a cousin.
2. Bernadette almost didn't survive either. She contracted cholera as a child and suffered from asthma all her life. She only grew to 1.4 m (4 ft. 7in.) tall, and died at the age of 35.
3. She didn't speak French. She spoke the language of Occitan, which was spoken in the Pyrenees region at that time. She learned a little French in school and could barely read or write at the time of her visions, having missed a lot of school due to her health.
4. The visions occurred when she was 14. She was out gathering firewood with her sister and a friend, when she paused at a stream to look for a dry place to cross. Not finding one, she sat down to take her shoes and stockings off, and that's when it happened for the first time. She said she heard a rushing wind, although nothing moved apart from a wild rose in a grotto. Then, a being Bernadette would later describe as "a small young lady" appeared in a dazzling light. The other two girls said they couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, but Bernadette's vision spoke to her and told her to come back every day for a fortnight.
5. Bernadette did exactly that, and her vision spoke to her about the importance of prayer and penance. One day the vision instructed her to drink from the Water of a nearby spring and eat the herbs that grew there. Bernadette did as she was told, and the muddy spring began to run clear. The lady told her that a chapel should be built there, which would later become the pilgrimage site of Lourdes.
6. The vision didn't immediately reveal herself as The Virgin Mary. It wasn't until Bernadette's 16th visit that the lady declared, "I am the Immaculate Conception". Interestingly, in later life, when Bernadette became a nun, she complained that none of the pictures or statues of Mary looked anything like the being she'd seen and refused to pray to them. Except for one, a picture said to have been painted by Saint Luke, which shows an olive-skinned, Middle Eastern looking Mary.
7. Bernadette's village was pretty divided about the nature of her visions. Some believed her; others thought she was mentally ill. Eventually, though, the Catholic Church, having interviewed Bernadette extensively, backed her up, and the chapel was built. Today, or at least, back in the day when life was normal, about 5 million people would visit the shrine every year to drink the water there. 69 people have been healed miraculously, ie no mundane scientific explanation has been found. Which doesn't sound like a lot given the amount of people who used to go there. I didn't see a figure for the number of cures where there was an alternative scientific explanation, though.
8. As for Bernadette, she hated the attention she was getting in her home town and decided to go to school in nearby Nevers and complete her education. She went to a school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers and considered joining the Carmelite order, but her health put paid to that ambition. So she joined the community at Nevers who ran her school. She was happy there and her sisters loved her for her kindness, holiness and wit, in spite of being in constant pain. Her favourite saint was Saint Bernard, and now she could write, she'd copy long texts about him into notebooks and pieces of paper. She worked as an assistant in the infirmary and would make beautiful embroidery for altar cloths and vestments.
9. She died of tuberculosis of the lungs and bones at the age of 35, on 16 April 1879. Her final words were, "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me, a poor sinner, a poor sinner". Several years after her death, her body was exhumed several times and found to be incorrupt, although scientists described it as "mummified". She was declared blessed on 14 June 1921 by Pope Pius XI and canonised by Pius XI on 8 December 1933. She is the patron saint of Lourdes, France, shepherds and shepherdesses and people ridiculed for their faith. She is invoked against poverty and bodily illness.
10. A Jewish man named Franz Werfel wrote a famous book about her life, The Song of Bernadette, which was made into a film in 1943. Werfel was fleeing from the Nazis in Austria and crossing the Pyrenees mountains into France, with the intention of going to America from there. While he was on the run he took shelter in Lourdes for a few weeks and was impressed by the hospitality he was shown there. He vowed if he made it to America alive he would write a book telling Bernadette's story. He did, and kept his promise.

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