Our Lady of Lourdes

Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin appeared 18 times to Bernadette Soubirous, an impoverished and asthmatic 14-year-old, in a small grotto along the Gave de Pau river. During the ninth apparition on February 25, the Virgin instructed Bernadette to dig in the ground, revealing a spring that has since flowed continuously at a rate of 32,000 gallons per day. On March 25, when Bernadette asked the lady her name, she replied in the local Gascon dialect: 'Que soy era Immaculada Concepciou' — 'I am the Immaculate Conception.' This was remarkable because the dogma had been defined by Pope Pius IX only four years earlier, and Bernadette, who was illiterate, did not understand the theological term. The local bishop approved the apparitions in 1862 after a rigorous four-year investigation. Bernadette entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers, where she died in 1879 at age 35. Her body was found incorrupt when exhumed in 1909 and again in 1919 and 1925.