From the desk of the Tar Heel disciple:
February 13, 2026 (#76)
Our Lady of Lourdes-Part IV
The principal message of Our Lady of Lourdes and subsequently of Bernadette Soubirous, whenever she gave testimony of her experience of the apparitions, was the call to prayer and penance. Bernadette consistently saw the sufferings she experienced in her own life as a result of her various and constant infirmities as opportunities to offer penance for the conversion of sinners.
One of the early and great American devotees of Bernadette was the Servant of God Father Thomas Frederick Price (1860-1919), who first visited Lourdes in 1911. Father Price came to be convinced that the Blessed Mother herself gave Bernadette to him as model to be venerated and imitated. He brought the story, message, and devotion to Our Lady of Lourdes and Bernadette back with him as he embarked on the founding of the first US foreign mission society, universally known as Maryknoll. He also extended the message and devotion as far as China, when he was sent there to establish the new society’s first mission, in 1918.
Before the North Carolina native died at a Hong Kong hospital the following year, the result of a ruptured appendix, he had asked that his heart be buried near the body of Bernadette, in Nevers, France. And there it is located today, while his other remains, initially buried in the city of his death, have since been transferred to the motherhouse of the Maryknoll Fathers, in New York.
When the body of Bernadette was first exhumed as part of the process of investigation for the cause of her beatification and canonization in 1909, it was found to be incorrupt. The same was found in subsequent exhumations (1919 and 1925). Today her remains (with wax coverings on her face and hands) are enshrined in a gold and crystal reliquary, located in a chapel of the former convent, in Nevers.
A recently filmed two-and-a-half-minute video which shows the convent which St. Bernadette entered into religious life and where she died, as well as her now enshrined incorrupt remains can be seen at:
Books for adults and for children as well as numerous devotional items related to Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette can be found at:
https://inhisname.com/search?options%5Bprefix%5D=last&q=lourdes
