St. Bernadette of Lourdes

The nearly 150-year-old body of Bernadette Soubirous is displayed in a purpose-built crystal coffin. Housed in a chapel at the abbey where she served as a nun, her uncannily lifelike visage is one of the most commonly used illustrations of incorruptible saints. According to Catholicism, an incorruptible saint is one whose body never decays.

Born in France on January 7, 1844, Bernadette Soubirous was a saint whose visions led to the foundation of the Marian shrine of Lourdes. St. Bernadette was the eldest daughter in a poverty-stricken family, and was generally considered to be frail, beautiful, and ignorant. After contracting cholera in the 1854 epidemic, she suffered from asthma and other illnesses throughout her lifetime.

She became famous at age 14 when she began to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary at the Massabielle Grotto in Lourdes. The apparition appeared to her 18 separate times, giving St. Bernadette affirmations and messages, including her wish that a chapel be built there. Mary also pointed St. Bernadette to healing spring waters on the property, which would become Lourdes Sanctuary.

St. Bernadette faithfully reported the sightings and messages to her church. Then, to escape public attention, she moved to Nevers as a boarding student at a local school run by the Sisters of Charity. She was kept protected in the mother house, and enjoyed caring for the sick. She died of tuberculosis on April 16, 1879, at the age of 35.

In 1909, 30 years after her death, two doctors and a nun exhumed her body and reported that, while the crucifix and rosary she was buried with were oxidized, her body was completely intact. They washed and redressed her body then reburied her in a new double casket.

The church exhumed her again in 1919, and the doctor who examined her said, “The body is practically mummified, covered with patches of mildew and quite a notable layer of salts, which appear to be calcium salts … The skin has disappeared in some places, but it is still present on most parts of the body.”

Finally, they exhumed her a third time in 1925, sending a few of her ribs to Rome as relics and molding an imprint of her face and hands. They decided that the blackish color of her face might be off-putting to pilgrims, and a light wax mask was in order. Her new face and hands were designed by Pierre Imans, a designer of fashion mannequins in Paris.

They sealed her body in wax and displayed it in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the mother house in Nevers, where it remains. St. Bernadette was canonized on December 8, 1933 by Pope Pius IX.

Today, Lourdes Sanctuary is one of the most popular Christian pilgrimage spots, receiving around 4 million visitors annually. You can still drink and bathe in the healing waters there, and can ask a priest to bless it for you. Visitors should remember that both Lourdes Sanctuary and the Chapel of Saint Bernadette are active chapels.