Lourdes and the Miraculous Cures

The story begins on Feb. 11, 1858 in Lourdes, a small town in southern France. There, a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous perceived a vision while gathering firewood with her sister and a friend near a grotto outside of town. The grotto is a hollowed-out space in a large rock outcrop known as the Massabielle. Bernadette reported seeing “a lady” standing in a small alcove above the grotto. This was the first of 18 appearances of the lady.

At the ninth appearance, the lady asked Bernadette to wash and drink from the fountain. But there was no fountain in the grotto, so Bernadette moved to the back of the grotto and began to dig, eventually finding some muddy water. The next day, a spring had begun flowing from the spot.

Catherine Latapie, a pregnant woman from a nearby town, had limited use of her right hand after an accident. On March 1, she met Bernadette at the grotto, bathed her hand in the spring water, and was immediately cured. That night she gave birth to a son who later became a priest. This cure became the first of many miracles at Lourdes.

During the 13th appearance, Bernadette was told to ask the parish priest to come in procession and build a chapel on the site. This request was met with skepticism from the priest, who demanded to know who this lady was. On several subsequent visits, Bernadette dutifully asked the lady who she was, but she received only a smile for an answer. Finally, on the 16th appearance Bernadette asked again and with great reverence and humility the lady answered, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception had been defined only four years earlier by Pope Pius IX and was a largely unknown concept to Catholic laity at that time. Bernadette certainly did not understand what the words meant, but when she repeated them to the parish priest, his skepticism vanished, and he immediately realized that the lady was the Blessed Virgin Mary.

There have been over 7,000 reported cures at Lourdes since that first one in 1858. Over 2,500 of these cures have been reviewed by medical personnel and deemed “medically inexplicable.”

One of the most remarkable cures happened to Pierre de Rudder. In 1867, 45-year-old Pierre’s left leg was crushed by a falling tree. Both his tibia and fibula were smashed below the knee. Despite treatment, the fracture never healed. His doctors advised amputation, but he refused.

Eight years after the accident, he and his wife decided to make a pilgrimage to Oostacker, Belgium, where a replica of the Grotto of Lourdes had recently been built. On April 7, 1875, as he was praying at the grotto, his left leg suddenly became as sound as his right. The doctors who had treated him verified these changes.

After Pierre died in 1898, his body was exhumed and it was found that two inches of missing bone had been added to the tibia and fibula of his left leg. This required five grams of phosphate of lime, but there are only 1.6 grams in the bloodstream. In 1908, the Church proclaimed this the 8th Lourdes miracle.

For the Church to declare a cure to be a miracle, very stringent criteria must be met, including that the cure must be immediate, complete, and permanent. This last criterion requires many years of follow-up exams and tests to ensure that the condition has not returned.

Danila Castelli, an Italian woman who suffered numerous ailments related to extremely high blood pressure, was cured in 1989 on a visit to Lourdes. However, her cure was not deemed a miracle until 2013. The Lourdes Medical Bureau reviewed her case five times over the course of 11 years before they would certify that her cure was complete and medically inexplicable.

Sister Bernadette Moriau suffered intense pain and partial paralysis due to a spinal condition. She required constant pain medication and could walk only with the aid of a corset for her back and a splint for her left leg. She was cured after her second visit to Lourdes in 2008 and was the subject of a recent 60 Minutes segment by Bill Whitaker. She was asked to repeat numerous neurological and imaging tests to confirm her cure. Her case was reviewed by over 300 physicians before it was declared medically inexplicable. Her cure was declared a miracle in 2018 by the Church, the 70th in Lourdes history, and the last to be so designated to date.

[Republished from the Arlington Catholic Herald with permission.]