Mandement Giving Judgment on the Apparition at the Grotto of Lourdes

The bishop writes that the instrument chosen was “a child of fourteen, Bernadette Soubirous, born at Lourdes, of a poor family”, and that his account is the one “gathered from the mouth of Bernadette” before the commission, which heard her twice. He weighs her sincerity, the crowds and the cures reported at the spring, and declares in his first article that Mary really appeared to Bernadette eighteen times from 11 February 1858 in the grotto of Massabielle; he submits the judgment to the pope. Further articles authorize the devotion and announce a sanctuary.

It is the church authority’s own judgment, given four years after the events, and it reports Bernadette’s testimony at second hand. Lasserre, whose book prints it, was a Catholic writer and an advocate of Lourdes; he gives the letter “in its principal provisions” and marks where he omits. See the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception.