Bernadette Soubirous
A girl of Lourdes who at fourteen reported eighteen apparitions in the grotto of Massabielle in 1858. The bishop of Tarbes judged in 1862 that Mary had really appeared to her. She died a religious at Nevers in 1879.
The bishop of Tarbes describes her in 1862 as a child of fourteen, born at Lourdes of a poor family, and says that by her own account she saw and heard a being that called itself the Immaculate Conception (Bishop Laurence of Tarbes, Mandement of 18 January 1862, p. 399). He judged that Mary had really appeared to her eighteen times in the grotto of Massabielle, from 11 February 1858 (Bishop Laurence of Tarbes, Mandement of 18 January 1862, art. 1, p. 408). The sanctuary at Lourdes dates the saying to 25 March 1858 (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, The apparitions, 25 March 1858).
The sanctuary gives her birth as 7 January 1844 and says that she was admitted in 1860 to the hospice managed by the Sisters of Nevers, lived afterwards as Sister Marie-Bernard in their mother house at Nevers, and died there on 16 April 1879; she was canonized on 8 December 1933 (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, Bernadette Soubirous). See the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.
In the timeline
- 8 December 1854, firm dateThe Dogma of the Immaculate Conception
On 8 December 1854 Pius IX defines that Mary was preserved from all stain of original sin from the first instant of her conception, a point long disputed among Latin theologians. Orthodox and Old Catholic statements reject the definition, and Anglicans record difficulty with it.