Inside the Sanctuaries

It all began on Thursday 11 February 1858, in the Massabielle cave…  A “lady dressed in white” appeared to Bernadette Soubirous for the first time. In the following weeks, the lady appeared to her seventeen times.

At the sixteenth apparition, on 25 March 1858, she said who she was: “I am the Immaculate Conception”, thereby signing and validating the message she had given Bernadette.

This evangelical message, which today is more timely than ever, is experienced each year by millions of pilgrims. They come to Lourdes to walk on the path of she to whom Our Lady did not promise happiness in this world, the woman who in 1933 became Saint Bernadette.