17 Feb: “a young girl dressed
in white, holding a rosary” first appeared to Bernadette in the grotto at
Massabielle.
24 Feb: “the Lady” called
for penance.
25 Feb: “the Lady” asked
Bernadette to dig with her hands in the ground and when she did so immediately
a well sprung up and “the Lady” told Bernadette to drink from and wash in the
new spring.
27 Feb: “the Lady” asked
Bernadette to have a chapel built at the grotto so that the people might come
there in procession.
2 March: “the Lady” repeated
her request of 27 Feb.
25 Mar: On this day, the
Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord, during the 16th apparition “the Lady”
told Bernadette in her own local dialect “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
3 Jun: Bernadette receives
her First Holy Communion.
16 Jul: On this the Feast of
Our Lady of Mount Carmel, The Blessed Virgin Mary, The Immaculate Conception,
appeared to Bernadette for the last time (here on Earth).
Lourdes after the
apparitions
1858: The first cures
reported.
1861: The first commission
held to examine claims of cures considered 100 cases and declared 15 of them
miraculous.
1862: A marble statue was
carved faithful to Bernadette’s description of “the Lady”. The building of a
Gothic church, and not as requested a humble chapel, was begun.
1871: The first Mass was
celebrated in the church.
1872: After the
Franco-Prussian War had ended, pilgrims flocked to Lourdes from all parts of
France.
1876: Archbishop Guibert of
Paris in the presence of 100,000 pilgrims consecrated the church as a minor
basilica. The Papal nuncio to France crowned the statue.
1882: A medical bureau
established at Lourdes to conduct initial medical assessments of purported
cures. Cases considered valid are asked to return in the following year. If a
claim is subsequently still considered to be meritorious it is referred on to
the International Medical Commission of Lourdes based at Paris. Appropriate
cases are referred by this Commission on to a canonical commission in the
patient’s home diocese. It is up to the bishop of that diocese to declare as to
whether or not he is satisfied that a cure is truly miraculous. By 1959 the
number of alleged cures was about 5,000 of which the church authorities have
declared 58 miraculous. [Most nervous and neurological conditions are excluded
from consideration. Miraculous cures have been accepted in cases of cancer,
tuberculosis and blindness.]
1883: Work began on a second
church with 15 chapels to cope with the huge increase in the number of
pilgrims. The church was completed in 1901.
1891: Pope Leo XIII, who had
had built a Lourdes Grotto in the Vatican gardens, approved an Office and Mass
for Lourdes for the Province of Aud of which the Diocese of Tarbes was a part.
1907: Pope Pius X promoted
the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes for the Universal Church.
1912: The Diocese of Tarbes
was renamed “Tarbes and Lourdes”. Thereafter the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes
took up residence in Lourdes from May to October (roughly the pilgrimage
“season”) each year.
1926: The second church was
also consecrated a minor basilica, the Rosary Basilica.
1958: In the year of the
centenary of the apparitions 6,000,000 pilgrims descended on Lourdes. Most
notable among them was the Patriarch of Venice, His Eminence Angelo Cardinal
Roncalli, who only a very short time later would become Pope John XXIII.
Cardinal Roncalli had been sent by Pope Pius XII as Papal Legate to consecrate
the crypt below the basilica of the Immaculate Conception and the underground
church of Pope Pius X.
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