Our Lady of Lourdes and St Bernadette: the story behind the statue

On 11 February 1858, Bernadette Soubirous went with her sister and a friend to gather firewood near the grotto of Massabielle, on the edge of Lourdes. There, in a niche in the rock, she saw a young Lady dressed in white, with a blue sash and a rosary, and a yellow rose on each foot. Between that day and 16 July 1858, Bernadette saw the Lady eighteen times.

The Lady asked her to pray for sinners, called for penance, asked that a chapel be built and that people come in procession. On 25 February she told Bernadette to drink from a spring and wash in it; Bernadette scratched at the muddy ground and a spring appeared, which still flows in the grotto. On 25 March, the feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette asked the Lady her name, and was told, in the local dialect: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

Four years earlier, in 1854, Pope Pius IX had defined as dogma that Mary was preserved from original sin from the first moment of her conception. Bernadette, who had little schooling, did not understand the phrase and repeated it to herself all the way to the parish priest so as not to forget it. The parish priest, who had been sceptical, was shaken. The bishop of Tarbes recognised the apparitions in 1862.

Lourdes became, and remains, one of the great pilgrim places of the world, especially for the sick. Many cures have been reported there; a small number, after long medical investigation, have been declared miraculous by the Church. Irish dioceses send pilgrimages every year, often with a large group of sick pilgrims and young helpers.

Bernadette was born on 7 January 1844, the eldest child of a miller who had fallen on hard times; when the apparitions began, the family was living in a former prison cell. She was questioned again and again by officials, priests and the curious, and never changed her account. In 1866 she entered the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, where she lived quietly, often ill, and died on 16 April 1879. She was canonised by Pope Pius XI on 8 December 1933, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

Her feast is kept on 16 April in most places. The memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes is on 11 February, the date of the first apparition; since 1993 it has also been the World Day of the Sick.

Look at almost any Irish parish grotto and you are looking at Massabielle: a rocky niche, a white statue of Our Lady with a blue sash, and often Bernadette kneeling below. Many were built for the Marian Year of 1954, the centenary of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, and they are still kept with flowers and candles.

A Lourdes statue is the classic choice for a grotto at home or in a parish, and a natural gift for anyone who has been to Lourdes, or who is sick or caring for someone who is. Our guide to making a garden grotto shows how to build one, and the grotto statues page brings the suitable pieces together.