The Postcard
A carte postale that was published by Lévy et Neurdein Réunis of 44, Rue Letellier, Paris. The card was posted in Lourdes on Tuesday the 22nd. September 1936 to:
Miss Woollett,
Agincourt Street,
Monmouth,
Wales.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"Thinking of you.
Arm Casson."
Bernadette Soubirous
Bernadette Soubirous, who was born on the 7th. January 1844, also known as Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, in the département of Hautes-Pyrénées in France.
She is known for experiencing Marian apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto at Massabielle. These apparitions occurred between the 11th. February 1858 and the 16th. July 1858. The young lady appeared to her identified herself as the "Immaculate Conception."
After a canonical investigation, Soubirous's reports were eventually declared "worthy of belief" on the 18th. February 1862, and the Marian apparition became known as Our Lady of Lourdes.
Catholics believe that Soubirous’s body has remained internally incorrupt.
The Marian shrine at Lourdes (Midi-Pyrénées, from 2016 part of Occitanie) went on to become a major pilgrimage site, attracting over five million pilgrims of all denominations each year.
On the 8th. December 1933, Pope Pius XI, declared Soubirous a saint of the Catholic Church. Her feast day, initially specified as the 18th. February - the day Mary promised to make her happy, not in this life, but in the next - is now observed in most places on the date of her death, the 16th. April.
Bernadette Soubirous - The Early Years
Soubirous was the daughter of François Soubirous (1807–1871), a miller, and Louise (née Casteròt 1825–1866), a laundress.
She was the eldest of nine children. Soubirous was baptized at the local parish church, St.-Pierre, on the 9th. January 1844, her parents' wedding anniversary.
Her godmother was Bernarde Casterot, her mother's sister, a moderately wealthy widow who owned a tavern. Hard times had fallen on France, and the family lived in extreme poverty. Soubirous was a very sick child, and possibly due to this only measured 1.4 m (4 ft. 7in.) tall.
She contracted cholera as a toddler, and suffered severe asthma for the rest of her life. Soubirous attended the day school conducted by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction from Nevers.
Contrary to a belief popularized by Hollywood films, Soubirous learned very little French, only studying French in school after the age of 13. She spoke the language of Occitan, which was spoken by the local population of the Pyrénées region at that time and to a residual degree today. At that time she could read and write very little due to her frequent illness.
Bernadette's Apparitions at Lourdes
By the time of the events at the grotto, the Soubirous family's financial and social status had declined to the point where they lived in a one-room basement, formerly used as a jail, called le cachot, "the dungeon", where they were housed for free by her mother's cousin, André Sajoux.
On the 11th. February 1858, Soubirous, then aged 14, was out gathering firewood with her sister Toinette and a friend near the grotto of Massabielle when she experienced her first vision.
While the other girls crossed the little stream in front of the grotto and walked on, Soubirous stayed behind, looking for a place to cross where she wouldn't get her stockings wet.
She finally sat down to take her shoes off in order to cross the water, and was lowering her stocking when she heard the sound of rushing wind, but nothing moved. A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, however, did move.
From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, "came a dazzling light, and a white figure". This was the first of 18 visions of "a small young lady." Her sister and her friend stated that they had seen nothing.
On the 14th. February, after Sunday Mass, Soubirous, with her sister Marie and some other girls, returned to the grotto. Soubirous knelt down immediately, saying she saw the apparition again.
When one of the girls threw holy water at the niche and another threw a rock from above that shattered on the ground, the apparition disappeared. On her next visit, on the 18th. February, Soubirous said that "the vision" asked her to return to the grotto every day for a fortnight.
This period of almost daily visions came to be known as la Quinzaine Sacrée, "Holy Fortnight." Initially, Soubirous's parents, especially her mother, were embarrassed and tried to forbid her to go. The supposed apparition did not identify herself until the seventeenth vision.
Although the townspeople who believed she was telling the truth assumed she saw the Virgin Mary, Soubirous never claimed it to be Mary. She described the lady as wearing a white veil, a blue girdle and with a yellow rose on each foot - compatible with "a description of any statue of the Virgin in a village church".
Soubirous's story caused a sensation amongst the townspeople, who were divided in their opinions on whether or not she was telling the truth. Some believed her to have a mental illness and demanded she be put in an asylum.
The other contents of Soubirous's reported visions focused on the need for prayer and penance. On the 25th. February she explained that the vision had told her to engage in an act of penance:
"Drink of the water of the spring,
wash in it and to eat the herb that
grows there."
To everyone's surprise, the next day the grotto was no longer muddy, and clear water flowed.
On the 2nd. March, during the thirteenth of the alleged apparitions, Soubirous told her family that the lady said that:
"A chapel should be built
and a procession formed".
Soubirous's 16th. claimed vision, which she stated went on for over an hour, was on the 25th. March. According to her account, during that visitation, she again asked the woman for her name but the lady just smiled back. She repeated the question three more times, and finally heard the lady say, in Gascon Occitan:
"I am the Immaculate Conception."
Despite being rigorously interviewed by officials of both the Catholic Church and the French government, she stuck consistently to her story.
Consequences of Soubirous's Visions
After investigation, Catholic Church authorities confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions in 1862.
In the 160 years since Soubirous's visions, cures have been verified by the Lourdes Medical Bureau as "inexplicable" - after what the Catholic Church claims are "extremely rigorous scientific and medical examinations" that failed to find any other explanation.
The Lourdes Commission that examined Bernadette after the visions ran an intensive analysis on the water and found that, while it had a high mineral content, it contained nothing out of the ordinary that would account for the cures attributed to it.
Bernadette said that it was faith and prayer that cured the sick:
"One must have faith and pray; the
water will have no virtue without faith".
Soubirous's request to the local priest to build a chapel at the site of her visions eventually gave rise to a number of chapels and churches at Lourdes. The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is now one of the major Catholic pilgrimage sites in the world.
One of the churches built at the site, the Basilica of St. Pius X, can accommodate 25,000 people, and was dedicated by the future Pope John XXIII when he was the Papal Nuncio to France.
Close to 5 million pilgrims from all over the world visit Lourdes (population of about 15,000) every year to pray and to drink the miraculous water, believing that they obtain from the Lord healing of the body and of the spirit.
Bernadette Soubirous - The Later Years
Disliking the attention she was attracting, Bernadette went to the hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers where she had learned to read and write. Although she considered joining the Carmelites, her health precluded her entering any of the strict contemplative orders.
On the 29th. July 1866, with 42 other candidates, she took the religious habit of a postulant and joined the Sisters of Charity at their motherhouse at Nevers. The Mother Superior at the time gave her the name Marie-Bernarde.
Bernadette was devoted to Saint Bernard, her patron saint; she copied long texts related to him in notebooks and on bits of paper.
Soubirous spent the rest of her brief life at the motherhouse, working as an assistant in the infirmary and later as a sacristan, creating beautiful embroidery for altar cloths and vestments. Her contemporaries admired her humility and spirit of sacrifice. One day, asked about the apparitions, she replied:
"The Virgin used me as a broom to
remove the dust. When the work is
done, the broom is put behind the
door again."
Soubirous had followed the development of Lourdes as a pilgrimage shrine while she still lived at Lourdes, but was not present for the consecration of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception there in 1876.
The Death of Bernadette Soubiros
Unfortunately, Soubirous's childhood bout of cholera left her with severe, chronic asthma, and eventually she contracted tuberculosis. For several months prior to her death, she was unable to take an active part in convent life.
Bernadette eventually died in Nevers of her long-term illness at the age of 35 on the 16th. April 1879 while praying the holy rosary. On her deathbed, as she suffered from severe pain and in keeping with the Virgin Mary's admonition of "Penance, Penance, Penance," Bernadette proclaimed that:
"All this is good for Heaven!"
Her final words were:
"Blessed Mary, Mother
of God, Pray for me".
Soubirous's body was laid to rest in the Saint Gildard Convent in Nevers.
Sainthood
Soubirous was declared blessed on the 14th. June 1921 by Pope Pius XI. She was canonized by Pius XI on the 8th. December 1933.
The Three Exhumations
In the spring of 2015, the town of Lourdes lobbied for Soubirous's remains to be returned to Lourdes, a move opposed by the city of Nevers.
(a) The First Exhumation
Bishop Gauthey of Nevers and the Catholic Church exhumed the body of Soubirous on the 22nd. September 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the postulators of the cause, two doctors and a sister of the community.
They claimed that although the crucifix in her hand and her rosary had both oxidized, her body appeared incorrupt - preserved from decomposition. This was cited as one of the miracles to support her canonization. They washed and re-clothed her body before burial in a new double casket.
(b) The Second Exhumation
The church exhumed Bernadette's corpse a second time on the 3rd. April 1919, on the occasion of the approval of Bernadette's canonization. Dr. Comte, who examined the body noted:
"The body is practically mummified, covered
with patches of mildew, and quite a notable
layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts.
The skin has disappeared in some places, but
it is still present on most parts of the body."
(c) The Third Exhumation
In 1925, the church exhumed the body for a third time. They took relics, which were sent to Rome. A precise imprint of the face was molded so that the firm of Pierre Imans in Paris could make a wax mask based on the imprints and on photographs.
This was a common practice for relics in France, as it was feared that the blackish tinge to the face and the sunken eyes and nose would be viewed as corruption by the public.
Imprints of the hands were also taken for the presentation of the body and for the making of wax casts. The remains were then placed in a gold and crystal reliquary in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the motherhouse in Nevers.
Three years later in 1928, Doctor Comte published a report on the exhumation of Soubirous in the second issue of the Bulletin de I'Association Medicale de Notre-Dame de Lourdes:
"I would have liked to open the left side of the thorax
to take the ribs as relics and then remove the heart
which I am certain must have survived. However, as
the trunk was slightly supported on the left arm, it
would have been rather difficult to try and get at the
heart without doing too much noticeable damage.
As the Mother Superior had expressed a desire for
the Saint's heart to be kept together with the whole
body, and as Monsignor the Bishop did not insist,
I gave up the idea of opening the left-hand side of
the thorax, and contented myself with removing the
two right ribs which were more accessible.
What struck me during this examination, of course,
was the state of perfect preservation of the skeleton,
the fibrous tissues of the muscles (still supple and firm),
of the ligaments, and of the skin, and above all the totally unexpected state of the liver after 46 years.
One would have thought that this organ, which is
basically soft and inclined to crumble, would have
decomposed very rapidly, or would have hardened to
a chalky consistency. Yet, when it was cut, it was soft
and almost normal in consistency. I pointed this out to
those present, remarking that this did not seem to be
a natural phenomenon."
Three Executions
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 22nd. September 1936, Uruguay broke off diplomatic relations with Spain because of reported executions of three sisters of a Uruguayan diplomat.
Hitler Youth
Also on that day, Benito Mussolini received Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach in Rome.
A special parade of visiting Hitler Youth was conducted in the Piazza Venezia.
