The Relics of St Bernadette of Lourdes; latter who experienced visions of the Virgin Mary, will visit Holycross Abbey, Thurles, in a couple of weeks, for two days, on September 19th and 20th 2024.
Initially born Bernadette Soubirous (January 7th 1844 – April 16th 1879), St Bernadette, then aged 14 years, claimed to have seen the Mother of God, on 18 different occasions.
St Bernadette (Sisters of Charity), as she later became known (daughter of François Soubirous (1807–1871), a miller, and his wife Louise (née Casteròt; 1825–1866), a laundress), was out gathering firewood with her sister Toinette and a friend near the grotto of Massabielle, when she experienced her first vision.
While the other girls had crossed a little stream in front of the grotto and walked on, St Bernadette stayed behind, looking for a shallower place to cross, where she wouldn’t get her shoes and stockings wet.
Having finally sat down to remove her shoes and stocking, she heard the sound of a rushing wind. A wild rose growing in a natural niche in the grotto, was the only foliage to move. From the dark alcove behind it, came a dazzling light, and a figure arrayed in white.
This was to be the first of 18 visions of what St Bernadette later recalled as “a small young lady”.
Her sister and her friend stated that they had seen nothing.
Having suffered a bout of cholera in her childhood, St Bernadette had been left with severe, chronic asthma, and eventually she contracted tuberculosis (TB) of the lungs and bones. She died in 1879 at Nièvre, in France and was declared blessed on June 14th 1921, by Pope Pius XI. She was canonized by Pius XI on December 8th 1933, latter the feast day of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Her body was first exhumed on September 22nd 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the Church, (two doctors and a sister of her religious community). They claimed that although the crucifix in her hand and her rosary beads had both oxidized, her body appeared fully preserved from decomposition (incorrupt). This was cited as one of the miracles to support her canonization. Her body was washed and re-clothed, before re-burial in the Chapel of St Joseph, in a new double casket.
The church again exhumed her body a second time, on April 3rd 1919, on the occasion of the approval of St Bernadette’s canonization. Then, what struck those present during this examination, was the state of perfect preservation of the body’s supple and firm fibrous tissues, and the totally unexpected state of the liver, after 40 years.
In 1925, the church again exhumed her body for the third time, taking relics, which were then sent to Rome.
The relics coming to Ireland are parts of her body that were removed after she was exhumed. These relics include bones, muscle tissue, and hair samples. Same will arrive at Ireland West Airport, (Knock Airport, Co. Mayo), on Wednesday September 4th next.
A full itinerary of where Saint Bernadette’s relics can be viewed, can be found HERE.
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