Our Lady of Lourdes

Saint Bernadette was an illiterate child who did not know her catchism. She could pray the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Creed. She also knew the prayer of the Miraculous Medal: “O Mary conceived without sin.”
On February 11, she was sent with her sister and two friends to collect wood. They walked to the Rock of Massabielle, where the two companions crossed a mountain stream. While Bernadette was removing her shoes to follow them, she became conscious of a “a pretty young girl with a rosary over her arm."  

The mysterious woman from heaven appeared eighteen times to Bernadette, and, among other things, told her to drink the water from a fountain, which was not yet observed. Bernadette scratched in the sand at the indicated spot, and water began to trickle through the earth; after a few days, there gushed forth every day 27,000 gallons of pure, clear spring water, and this water continues to flow. 

Bernadette was asked by Our Lady of Lourdes to request the priest to have a church built on that spot, that processions should be made to the grotto, and that people should drink the water. The main emphasis of her message was that the faithful should visit the grotto to do penance for their sins and for those of the whole world. 

In 1873, a basilica was built on top of the rock and in 1883 another church was built below and in front of the rock. From 1867 when records began to be kept until 1908, nearly 5,000,000 pilgrims had visited the grotto; now about 1,000,000 people visit Lourdes every year.

Although Our Lady never promised that pilgrims who visit the grotto will be healed of their physical ills, remarkable cures began amost immediately and have continued. Many of them are such that they can only be ascribed to supernatural power.