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St. Bernadette Soubirous

St. Bernadette Soubirous

St. Bernadette Soubirous

A sepia photo of St. Bernadette Soubirous
Wikimedia Commons

St. Bernadette Soubirous

Feast day: April 16

Born in Lourdes, France, in 1844, St. Bernadette Soubirous faced intense asthma and endured extreme poverty. In 1858, she experienced a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a grotto by the Gave River close to Lourdes. A spring flowed from the grotto, and the waters were found to possess miraculous qualities. She received additional apparitions from the Virgin who revealed that she was the Immaculate Conception and a place of worship ought to be built on the location. In 1866, Bernadette joined the Sisters of Charity. Suffering from long-term illness, including escalating asthma and bone tuberculosis, she passed away at the age of 35. Bernadette was canonized in 1933, and she serves as the patron saint of the sick, the impoverished, and Lourdes.

Prayer

O God, who summoned your servant St. Bernadette
to pursue you above everything else,
bestow that, assisting you, via her model and mediation,
with a clean and modest spirit,
we might finally reach your everlasting splendor.
By our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who dwells and rules alongside you in the oneness of the Holy Spirit,
God, for eternity and beyond.

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