Since pilgrimages began in it is estimated that over million people have visited the Shrine. Pilgrimages to Lourdes began after the Virgin Mary appeared in a series of 18 apparitions to a poor 14 year old girl, named Bernadette Soubirous.
These apparitions took place in a Grotto on the banks of the river Gave between February and July After several attempts Bernadette unearthed the spring which is the still the source of the famous Lourdes water to this day.
It is a common misconception that most pilgrims visit Lourdes in order to experience a miracle. She was fortunate to survive cholera as a young child, but was left infirm and severely asthmatic. On February 11, Bernadette, then aged 14, was out gathering firewood with one of her sisters and a friend, half a mile below the village on land bordered by a loop in the Gave de Pau, near a rugged outcropping known as Massabielle.
On the northern side of Massabielle, near the riverbank, an irregularly shaped grotto lay in shadow. The girls crossed the stream in front of the grotto in search of kindling.
Suddenly, Bernadette heard the sound of rushing wind, though nothing else stirred. Following the sound, her eyes were drawn to a dark alcove above the opening of the grotto, where she saw the shape of a lady in a white veil surrounded by dazzling light. The other girls saw nothing. Word of her vision spread quickly and swarms of the sick and dying descended upon Lourdes in pursuit of a glimmer of hope.
They followed Bernadette to the grotto, but still no one except Bernadette ever saw anything. During the ensuing weeks the apparition imparted many revelations to Bernadette, including the source of a therapeutic spring in the cavernous hollow, and soon rumours escalated that after drinking the water tumours shrank, cancers went into remission and the paralysed walked.
Within the course of six months, the apparition appeared to Bernadette a total of 18 times. Upon her last visitation, the lady disclosed herself to be the Virgin Mary. This final revelation would soon make Lourdes one of the most famous pilgrimage destinations in Christendom, behind only Rome; and Bernadette a saint.
Nearly eight years of rigorous investigation followed, offering no explanation for some of the miraculous cures that had occurred. But Bernadette never wavered from her story, despite being repeatedly interviewed by the local bishop and church experts dispatched from Rome. Quite possibly her innocence and sincerity made her testimony all the more believable, and her revelations were finally declared authentic by the Church in Inexplicably, she never returned to Lourdes in search of a cure for herself.
Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest, writer, and authority on Lourdes who has visited the town many times, says what interests him are the communal aspects of the pilgrimage experience and the healing aspects of the place. She was completely uninterested in impressing people. She was very authentic. She wanted to tell her story with no personal gain, and that is the mark of a true saint. Robert Lively, vice president of a pharmaceutical company in Washington, DC, and a member of the Order of Malta, a Roman Catholic service organization, volunteers every year at Lourdes.
On the day of the 16th apparition, March 25, the lady revealed herself as the Blessed Virgin Mary. During her ecstatic trance in the grotto, Bernadette began to dig in the earth until a small puddle of water appeared. Over the next few days the puddle enlarged into a pool and eventually became the sacred spring for which Lourdes is now so famous. Initially only a regional pilgrimage destination, as incidents of healing began to be reported, the spring developed an international reputation for having therapeutic powers.
From to the site was mostly a regional pilgrimage destination attracting approximately 30, persons per year. Initially the shrine was not known for its curative power but after , when incidents of healing at the spring began to be reported, the shrine rapidly developed a national and then international reputation for having therapeutic powers.
The increasing number of pilgrims eventually overcrowded the original church built above the grotto in , and in an immense basilica was constructed. She is also called Maria de Lourdes.
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