On the Feast of the Apparitions of Our Lady at Lourdes

And with love and prayers to my dear patron, St. Bernadette...

The only known picture of St. Bernadette at the Grotto, taken after the apparitions ended.

The Grotto at Lourdes shortly after the visits from Our Lady; the images of the Blessed Mother  and Bernadette are superimposed.  Still, it is much as it would have looked, if Our Lady could have been seen by eyes other than Bernadette's/

The Grotto at Lourdes in the 1950s, when all the crutches from miraculous healings were still present. 

Mass being offered at the Grotto, sometime in the '50s.

The Lourdes grotto today.

St. Bernadette, to whom Our Lady, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, appeared 18 times in 1858, was canonized by Pope Pius XI in 1933.  The approved Lourdes miracles number only 67, those having been investigated officially by the Church, though there have been over 4000 claims of cures.  Sixty-three of the approved cures occurred before 1965; forty-seven before 1950.




Many former posts on St. Bernadette and Lourdes, with links, videos, and coloring pages can be found here!

(* Thirty posts to go!)