St Bernadette - an incorruptible

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While in Nevers, France, we visited the Convent Chapel where the incorrupt body of St Bernadette lies in a glass casket. Her body was exhumed several times and at one point washed. This resulted in her exposed face and hands discolouring and they are now covered in wax masks. Bernadette was born in Lourdes in 1844, the first child of a very poor family. At the age of 11, she contracted cholera and suffered poor health from that point on. In 1858, she received the first of three visitations from Mary, the mother of God, who told her ‘I am The Immaculate Conception’. She had no idea what the words meant, as she was mostly illiterate. When, a few years later, Bernadette repeated the phrase to the Bishop, it helped convince him that the visitations had taken place. Bernadette died in 1879, was beatified in 1925 and canonised in 1933. We visited Lourdes on our last trip to France in 2017 and there were thousands of pilgrims and tourists there. While on the subject of the ‘immaculate conception’, one school-girl, in a religious studies class at Vince’s school, wrote about the ‘immaculate contraption’. The photo is from Wikimedia. Attribution is not required.