St. Bernadette Bookmark - Artist John Nava

Saint Bernadette
Born 1844, at Lourdes, France
Died 1879, at Nevers, France

Bernadette was the oldest child in a very poor family. She went to work as a servant at the age of twelve and later as a shepherdess. In 1858, at the age of fourteen, she experienced a series of visions of the Virgin Mary in grotto at Lourdes. She was led to a spring of healing water and told to have a chapel built there. Later she joined the Sisters of Notre Dame of Nevers and lived and worked with them for the rest of her life. Since the appearances of Mary to Bernadette the pilgrimage movement to Lourdes developed and is the greatest in modern Europe. She is the patron saint of illness, poverty and Lourdes, France. Her feast day is April 16.