Our Lady of Lourdes

Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to fourteen year old Bernadette Soubirous in that small town located in the foothills of the Pyrenee mountains of southern France.

Bernadette saw a beautiful young girl of sixteen or seventeen. She described this girl as "dressed in a white robe, girded at the waist with a blue ribbon. She wore upon her head a white veil which gave just a glimpse of hair. Her feet were bare but covered by the last folds of her robe and a yellow rose was upon each of them. She held on her right arm a rosary of white beads with a chain of gold shining like the two roses on her feet."

Bernadette knelt and began to pray the rosary. At the end of the five decades the woman smiled and disappeared.

The liturgical feast of Our Lady of Lourdes was established for February 11 approved by Pope Leo XIII and first granted to the Diocese of Tarbes in the year 1890. Less than twenty years later, on November 13, 1907, his successor, Pope St. Pius X proclaimed that it be observed throughout the universal Church.