Our Lady of Lourdes

On February 11, 1858, Bernadette Soubirous, a poor and sickly fourteen-year-old girl, went to gather firewood near the grotto of Massabielle outside Lourdes, in southern France. There she saw a young lady dressed in white with a blue sash and a yellow rose on each foot, holding a rosary. Between February and July of that year, the Lady appeared to her eighteen times.

She asked for prayer and penance for sinners, and for a chapel to be built and processions to come there. On February 25 she told Bernadette to dig in the ground, and a spring began to flow that has never stopped. On March 25 the Lady revealed her name: 'I am the Immaculate Conception,' confirming the dogma proclaimed in 1854. The Church approved the apparitions in 1862. Since then millions of pilgrims have come, and the Church has officially recognized more than seventy miraculous healings.

Saint John Paul II established February 11 as the World Day of the Sick in 1992, and on this day many parishes celebrate the Anointing of the Sick. In Lourdes, the evening torchlight procession with the sung Ave Maria is one of the most moving sights in the Catholic world.

Many churches in Latin America and the United States have replica grottoes, where families leave candles and flowers on her feast.