Our Lady of Lourdes — Chronology

Chronology of the reported apparitions at Lourdes, of what came before and after them, and of the Church's acts (1854–2025)

An open, source-referenced chronology of the apparitions reported by Bernadette Soubirous at the Massabielle grotto in Lourdes, France, in 1858: the 1854 dogma that preceded them, the civil closing of the grotto, the documented acts of the Catholic Church concerning them, the basilicas and pilgrimage institutions that grew around the site, Bernadette's later life at Nevers, and the recognition of reported cures — recorded as dated Church acts, never as cures this site asserts.

Last updated: 2026-08-06

📜 Chronology

How far the case went

Lourdes is approved, and it is the bishop of Tarbes who approved it. The decree of 18 January 1862 judged that the Virgin "really appeared to Bernadette Soubirous" — the strongest wording any authority in this family of chronologies has used — and it is diocesan. Rome then did more for Lourdes than for any comparable case, up to putting the feast of 11 February in the calendar of the universal Church in 1907, without ever ruling on whether the apparitions happened. Both halves are true at once and the page keeps them apart: each rung records one authority, what it did, when, and in which document, and nothing here adds up to a verdict beyond the one the bishop gave.

  1. Local inquiry at LourdesFebruary–July 1858 Investigated — no verdict issued
  2. The bishop of TarbesCommission opened 28 July 1858 · decree of 18 January 1862 Investigated — concluded in favour
  3. Rome — the apparitions themselves1862 to the present No record found that this step took place
  4. Rome — the cult, the calendar and the shrine (not the apparitions)1876 · 1890–1892 · 1907 · 1957 · 2007 Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition
One rung per authority. "No ruling found" is a statement about the evidence, not about the case.
Step by step, with the documents

Local inquiry at Lourdes February–July 1858

Investigated — no verdict issued

The civil authorities of Lourdes, and the parish priest Dominique Peyramale

The examinations of Bernadette in 1858 were CIVIL acts, not canonical ones. Police commissioner Jacomet questioned her on 21 February 1858, and the grotto was later boarded up by order of the civil authorities. Peyramale, the parish priest and the nearest ecclesiastical authority, opened no canonical inquiry: he demanded that the Lady give her name and make the rose bush at the grotto bloom in winter, and by the Sanctuary's own account "stuck to his position" — the name was reported on 25 March, the rose bush "did not bloom". No ecclesiastical judgment of any kind was issued at this level; the case passed to the bishop, who constituted his commission of enquiry on 28 July 1858.

[1] [2]

The bishop of Tarbes Commission opened 28 July 1858 · decree of 18 January 1862

Investigated — concluded in favour

Bertrand-Sévère Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes, and the commission of enquiry he constituted

The commission was charged "to collect and to ascertain the facts which have happened or which could still occur in or around the grotto of Lourdes" and worked for nearly four years. The decree of 18 January 1862 judged: "We judge that the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, really appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, on 11th February 1858 and the following days, eighteen times, in the grotto of Massabielle, near the city of Lourdes; that this apparition assumes all the characteristics of the truth, and that the faithful have reason to believe it beyond doubt." This diocesan act, and no other, is what the approval of Lourdes rests on.

[2]

Rome — the apparitions themselves 1862 to the present

No record found that this step took place

The Holy See

No Roman act judging the apparitions has been located. Rome acted about Lourdes repeatedly, and generously — the next rung is the list — but the acts located here are liturgical, indulgential, honorific, or about Bernadette. Bernadette's beatification (1925) and canonization (1933) judge her and not the grotto: the Sanctuary says she was canonized "not for having been chosen for the Apparitions, but for the way in which she responded to that grace". Pius XII's centenary encyclical of 1957 still credits the judgment to the diocese, describing her testimony as "wisely put to the test by episcopal authority and approved as early as 1862". Ninety-five years after the decree, in a document devoted to Lourdes, the pope names the bishop's act as the recognition and no Roman one.

Searched for a Roman act judging the apparitions themselves; none was found. Searched: vatican.va, by domain-restricted search and through the Holy See's own document indices, which return for Lourdes the 1957 encyclical, the homilies and addresses of the papal visits, and the 2007 indulgence decree — none of them a judgment on the apparitions; and the Acta Apostolicae Sedis archive on vatican.va, whose series begins only in 1909, after both the 1862 decree and the 1907 extension of the feast, and whose located Lourdes material concerns Bernadette's cause rather than the grotto. No page-by-page sweep of every AAS volume was made, so this is an absence in the indices consulted, not a proof from the whole series. Two further controls, both from sources that would have every reason to say otherwise. The Sanctuary's own page on the popes of Lourdes recounts what each pope granted — prayers, indulgences, a cause, an encyclical, four pilgrimages — and nowhere says a pope approved or recognised the apparitions. And the "decree of approval by Pius IX of 1 February 1876" that circulates in the devotional literature has a document behind it after all, but not that one: 1 February 1876 is the date of the decree of CANONICAL CORONATION of the image, executed at Lourdes on 3 July that year. The date is real and the description is not, which is how a coronation becomes an approval in retelling. The status is "no record found" and NOT "the case did not reach this step", and the change matters: Bishop Laurence closed his 1862 decree by submitting it upward — "We humbly submit our judgment to the judgment of the Supreme Pontiff, who is charged with governing the universal Church" — so the case demonstrably did reach Rome. What has not been located is an answering act. Should one be produced, this rung changes.

[11] [12] [13] [14] [2] [3] [27] [22]

Rome — the cult, the calendar and the shrine (not the apparitions) 1876 · 1890–1892 · 1907 · 1957 · 2007

Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition

Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XII, and the Apostolic Penitentiary

Rome went further for Lourdes than for any other case in this family, and never once on the question. Pius IX decreed the canonical coronation of the image on 1 February 1876 and commissioned the crown itself from the Paris goldsmith Mellerio; the upper church was consecrated that July. Leo XIII approved prayers and indulgences attached to the shrine, and granted the feast of 11 February with a proper Office and Mass, "In apparitione Beatae Mariae Virginis Immaculatae", to the diocese of Tarbes around 1890–1892. Then in 1907 the feast was extended to the UNIVERSAL CHURCH — attributed to Pius X, and the heaviest Roman act in any of these chronologies: a liturgical commemoration of a reported apparition, kept by the whole Latin rite, every year. Pius XII devoted an encyclical to the shrine for the centenary (Le Pèlerinage de Lourdes, 2 July 1957), and the Apostolic Penitentiary granted indulgences for the 150th anniversary on 21 November 2007. Every one of these presupposes the devotion and none adjudicates the event. A feast in the universal calendar is the Church permitting and then universalising a cult; it is not a finding of fact, which is why the same 1957 encyclical that celebrates the shrine still points at the bishop of Tarbes for the recognition. The rung is marked as an act on a related matter for that reason — and a reader who thinks the 1907 extension must amount to approval should notice that the Sanctuary, which would say so if it could, does not.

[12] [11] [13] [27] [22] [21]

About

Work-in-progress dataset compiled from public sources (see references). The apparitions are recorded as REPORTED events: the dataset states who reported what and when, and what the Church ruled and when, citing the ruling document — it does not assert the supernatural claim as fact. Reported miracles are handled the same way: a cure is a claim, and only two things attached to it are datable — that it was REPORTED, and any RECOGNITION ACT by which a bishop declared it miraculous. No entry here says a cure happened; the Medical Bureau (1883) and the International Medical Committee (1954) can find a cure unexplained but declare no miracle, counts are attributed to whoever publishes them (the Sanctuary says 72 as of 2025, while an older page of its own site still says 70, and both are kept), and recognized cures earn no rung on the approval ladder, which records judgments on the apparitions alone. The chronology also carries what came before 1858 and the institutional history after it — the basilicas, the pilgrimage bodies, Bernadette's years at Nevers. Contested claims are attributed to their authors; dates not yet verified against a primary source are flagged with a ? mark, and where sources disagree — including where the Sanctuary disagrees with itself — the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. Corrections against primary sources are welcome.

What it is
A chronology of the 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary that Bernadette Soubirous reported at the Massabielle grotto in Lourdes, France, between 11 February and 16 July 1858, and of the documented response — civil interrogations, the episcopal inquiry of 1858, the recognition decree of 1862, and the recognition of cures that continues today.[1] [2]
Church approval status
Approved at the diocesan level, affirmatively. Bishop Bertrand-Sévère Laurence of Tarbes, in his decree of 18 January 1862, judged that "the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, really appeared to Bernadette Soubirous... eighteen times, in the grotto of Massabielle". This dataset records that judgment as the bishop's dated act, not as an independent finding.[2]
Visionary
Bernadette Soubirous (1844–1879), a fourteen-year-old miller's daughter at the time of the reported apparitions; a Sister of Charity of Nevers from 1866; canonized by Pius XI on 8 December 1933.[3] [9]
Recognized cures
72 cures recognized as miraculous by the Church, according to the Sanctuary of Lourdes (as of 2025; the most recent it lists is Antonia Raco, proclaimed by the Bishop of Tursi-Lagonegro on 16 April 2025). Each recognition is a diocesan bishop's declaration after medical review, and the recognitions — not the cures — are what this chronology dates. The Sanctuary's list bunches them: seven on 18 January 1862 in the approval decree itself, thirty-three between 1907 and 1913, then nothing for thirty-three years. An older page of the Sanctuary's own site still states 70 — the count is attributed to the Sanctuary, never asserted by this site, and the disagreement is left standing.[5] [6] [17] [24]
The shrine that grew
Four churches were built at the grotto in answer to the request Bernadette reported on 2 March 1858: the crypt (opened 19 May 1866), the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception above it (blessed 15 August 1871, consecrated 1876), the Rosary Basilica (first stone 16 July 1883, consecrated 6 October 1901, minor basilica 1926) and the underground Basilica of Saint Pius X (consecrated 25 March 1958, the centenary year). The Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes, the volunteer body that receives sick and disabled pilgrims, dates from 1885.[21] [20] [26] [23]

Chronology

Key events in chronological order. A ? flag marks dates not yet verified against a primary source.

5 decades with no recorded events (1960–2009) 1854195820182025
  1. 18541854-12-08

    Rome

    Pius IX defines the dogma of the Immaculate Conception

    The apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus defines the Immaculate Conception of Mary as Catholic dogma — four years BEFORE the reported apparitions at Lourdes. The date anchors the significance later attached to the words Bernadette reported on 25 March 1858.[8]

  2. 18581858-02-11

    Lourdes, France

    First reported apparition at the Massabielle grotto

    Bernadette Soubirous, gathering firewood with her sister and a friend, reports seeing a "Lady" in white in a niche of the Massabielle grotto. She initially calls the figure only "Aquéro" ("that thing" in the local Gascon dialect). First of 18 reported apparitions.[1]

  3. 18581858-02-21

    Lourdes, France

    Police commissioner Jacomet interrogates Bernadette

    The civil authorities respond with skepticism: police commissioner Jacomet questions Bernadette, who speaks only of "Aquéro" and does not claim to know who the figure is. The interrogations by the civil authorities are among the contemporaneously documented events of 1858.[1]

  4. 18581858-02-25

    Lourdes, France

    Discovery of the spring (ninth reported apparition)

    Bernadette reports that the Lady told her to "go, drink of the spring and wash yourself there"; scratching the ground inside the grotto, she uncovers the spring that still flows and around which the practice of the Lourdes baths later grew.[1]

  5. 18581858-03-02

    Lourdes, France

    Request for processions and a chapel (thirteenth reported apparition)

    Bernadette reports the Lady's message: "Go and tell the priests that people are to come here in procession and to build a chapel here." She carries the request to parish priest Dominique Peyramale, who demands to know the Lady's name.[1]

  6. 18581858-03-25

    Lourdes, France

    "Que soy era Immaculada Concepciou" (sixteenth reported apparition)

    On the feast of the Annunciation, Bernadette reports that, asked her name, the Lady answered in Gascon Occitan: "Que soy era Immaculada Concepciou" — "I am the Immaculate Conception" (spelling as given by the Sanctuary; quoted only as reported). The dogma had been defined by Pius IX in 1854; whether the unlettered Bernadette could have known the formula became a central argument in the subsequent inquiry.[1] [2]

  7. 18581858-06 ?

    Lourdes, France

    The civil authorities close the grotto

    Crowds kept coming to Massabielle after Bernadette reported nothing further from 7 April 1858. By the Sanctuary's own account the authorities prohibited access to the grotto "from 15th June", and "signs, boards, barricades are put up"; shortly afterwards the bishop of Tarbes went as far as forbidding Catholics to go there, lifting his ban about a fortnight later. The barricade was still standing on 16 July, which is why Bernadette reported the last apparition from the far bank of the Gave. French accounts date the reopening to 5 October 1858, on an order of Napoleon III. The closing and the reopening are CIVIL acts by civil authorities — the same register as the Jacomet interrogation, and not an ecclesiastical judgment of any kind.[15] [16]

    Two closure dates are in the sources and neither is preferred: 7 June 1858 (French Wikipedia) and "from 15th June" (the Sanctuary's own page, the only official source of the two). The reopening of 5 October 1858 by Napoleon III rests on a tertiary source alone; no official or archival document for it has been located. Dated to the month, and left unverified.

  8. 18581858-07-16

    Lourdes, France

    Eighteenth and final reported apparition

    With the grotto boarded up by order of the civil authorities, Bernadette reports seeing the Lady a final time from the far bank of the Gave river, "more beautiful than ever". End of the series of 18 reported apparitions begun on 11 February.[1]

  9. 18581858-07-28

    Tarbes, France

    Bishop Laurence opens the episcopal commission of inquiry

    Bertrand-Sévère Laurence, Bishop of Tarbes, establishes a commission of inquiry into the reported apparitions and alleged cures — the start of the Church's formal examination, twelve days after the last reported apparition.[2]

  10. 18621862-01-18

    Tarbes, France

    Decree of Bishop Laurence recognizing the apparitions

    After the four-year inquiry, Bishop Laurence issues the judgment that made Lourdes an approved apparition: "We judge that the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, really appeared to Bernadette Soubirous, on 11th February 1858 and the following days, eighteen times, in the grotto of Massabielle", and that the apparition "assumes all the characteristics of the truth". THE key approval document; the same decree authorizes the cult and the building of the requested chapel.[2]

  11. 18621862-01-18

    Tarbes, France

    The first seven cures recognized — in the approval decree itself

    The Sanctuary's published list of recognized cures dates the first seven to 18 January 1862, the date of Bishop Laurence's decree: Catherine Latapie of Loubajac, Louis Bouriette and Blaisette Cazenave of Lourdes, Henri Busquet and Madeleine Rizan of Nay, Justin Bouhort of Lourdes and Marie Moreau of Tartas. The datable event is the bishop's act of recognition; the list and the count are the Sanctuary's, and this site asserts nothing about the cures themselves. That the judgment on the apparitions and the first cure recognitions arrive in one document is exactly why the two are easily run together — they are kept apart here, and recognized cures earn no rung on the approval ladder, which records judgments on the apparitions alone.[17] [2]

  12. 18661866-05-19

    Lourdes, France

    The crypt — the first church built at the grotto — opened

    The crypt beneath what became the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception opens on 19 May 1866, the first church built in answer to the request Bernadette reported on 2 March 1858 ("go and tell the priests… to build a chapel here"). It holds about 120 people. The Sanctuary keeps 19 May as the crypt's dedication anniversary, alongside 25 March for Saint Pius X, 2 July for the Immaculate Conception and 6 October for the Rosary.[26] [20]

  13. 18661866-07 ?

    Nevers, France

    Bernadette leaves Lourdes for the convent of Saint-Gildard, Nevers

    Bernadette departs Lourdes and enters the motherhouse of the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, taking the postulant's habit on 29 July 1866. She never returns to Lourdes, living her remaining thirteen years as Sister Marie-Bernard.[9] [10] [3]

    Three dates for the same move are in the sources and none is preferred: Bernadette left Lourdes on 4 July and took the postulant's habit at Saint-Gildard on 29 July 1866 according to the Wikipedia biography; the Sanctuary's own site states that she "joined the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction in Nevers on 7 July 1866"; and the Sanctuary's biography page organizes her life around the earlier move (15 July 1860) into the Lourdes hospice run by the same congregation. Month verified; day not pinned to a primary source.

  14. 18761876-07-01

    Lourdes, France

    Consecration of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception; the statue crowned

    The upper church begun in 1866 above the crypt, blessed on 15 August 1871, is consecrated in July 1876. The statue of Our Lady of Lourdes — carved by Joseph-Hugues Fabisch and inaugurated at the grotto on 4 April 1864 — is crowned with a golden crown commissioned by Pius IX from the Paris goldsmith Mellerio, under a decree of canonical coronation dated 1 February 1876; the crowning itself was performed at Lourdes on 3 July. That date is worth holding on to: the "decree of approval of the apparitions by Pius IX, 1 February 1876" repeated across the devotional literature is this decree, described as something it is not. A crowning honours an image and confers nothing on the reported apparitions: the diocesan decree of 1862 remains the only act that judged them.[21] [20] [22] [27]

    The Sanctuary's two websites give different days for the consecration: lourdes-france.org states 1 July 1876, while lourdes-france.com keeps 2 July as the basilica's dedication anniversary. Both are recorded; neither is preferred. The event is filed under 1 July.

  15. 18791879-04-16

    Nevers, France

    Death of Bernadette Soubirous

    Bernadette dies at the convent of Saint-Gildard in Nevers, aged 35, after years of illness. Her feast day was later fixed on 16 April, the date of her death.[9] [3]

  16. 1883

    Lourdes, France

    Foundation of the Medical Bureau (Bureau des Constatations Médicales)

    Dr. Georges-Fernand Dunot de Saint-Maclou establishes the Medical Bureau at the request of Fr. Rémi Sempé, the Sanctuary's first rector, so that no reported cure would circulate without collegiate medical assessment. The Bureau examines claimed cures and can declare them "unexplained in the present state of science"; it does not declare miracles — that act belongs to the diocesan bishop.[4] [6]

  17. 1885

    Lourdes, France

    Foundation of the Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes

    The Hospitalité Notre-Dame de Lourdes is founded in 1885: an association of volunteers — hospitaliers — who welcome pilgrims and above all sick and disabled pilgrims, taking turns through the year so that the shrine has a continuous presence of them. It is the institution through which the pilgrimage's characteristic organisation of care took shape, and the Sanctuary distinguishes it from the diocesan "hospitalities of accompaniment" that travel with their own groups.[23]

  18. 19011901-10-06

    Lourdes, France

    Consecration of the Rosary Basilica

    The church of the Most Holy Rosary, whose first stone Cardinal Desprez, archbishop of Toulouse, laid on 16 July 1883 for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the last reported apparition, is consecrated on Sunday 6 October 1901 by Cardinal Langénieux acting as Leo XIII's delegate; the pope had signed the apostolic letter 'Parta humano generi' for the occasion on 8 September 1901. Pius XI raised the church to a minor basilica by apostolic brief of 24 September 1926. The Sanctuary's archives hold the minutes of the consecration, signed by the consecrating prelates.[20] [21]

  19. 1907

    Rome

    The feast of 11 February extended to the universal Church

    The liturgical memorial of the apparitions is extended in 1907 to the whole Latin Church, universalising the feast with its proper Office and Mass "In apparitione Beatae Mariae Virginis Immaculatae" that Leo XIII had granted to the diocese of Tarbes around 1890–1892. This is the furthest Rome has gone for any reported apparition in these chronologies: not an indulgence, not a crown, but a day the entire rite keeps. It is still a concession of cult — the Church permitting a devotion and then extending it — and not a judgment that the apparitions occurred, which is why the approval ladder files it as an act on a related matter and why Pius XII, writing on Lourdes half a century later, still credits the recognition to the bishop of Tarbes.[12] [11]

    The Vatican City State's page dates the insertion to 1907 and names neither a pope nor a day. Devotional sources attribute the extension to Pius X and some give a day; no Holy See document fixing one has been located, so only the year is recorded.

  20. 19071907–1913

    Lourdes, France

    The jubilee wave of cure recognitions (a count attributed to the Sanctuary)

    Thirty-three of the seventy-two cures on the Sanctuary's published list carry a recognition date between 4 February 1907 and 18 October 1913 — the years around the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions — and twenty of those fall in 1908 alone, five of them on a single day, 6 June 1908. No recognition is then listed for thirty-three years, until 20 May 1946. What is recorded here is the shape of the Sanctuary's own list of Church acts, attributed to the Sanctuary; nothing is claimed about the cures, and the list gives for each case only the person, the town and the date of recognition — not the declaring bishop, and for most not the date of the cure.[17]

  21. 19251925-06-14 ?

    Rome

    Beatification of Bernadette Soubirous

    Pius XI beatifies Bernadette in Rome, an intermediate step of the cause opened in 1908. The beatification concerns Bernadette's own life and virtues — canonization causes judge the person, not the apparition.[10]

    The 14 June 1925 date is given by the Wikipedia biography and devotional sources; neither the Sanctuary's Bernadette page nor Britannica states the beatification day. Not yet verified against a Holy See document.

  22. 19331933-12-08

    Rome

    Canonization of Bernadette by Pius XI

    Pius XI canonizes Bernadette Soubirous on 8 December 1933 — deliberately the feast of the Immaculate Conception, echoing the title Bernadette reported hearing at the grotto in 1858. The Sanctuary notes she was canonized "not for having been chosen for the Apparitions, but for the way in which she responded to that grace".[3] [9]

  23. 1954

    Lourdes, France

    The International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL) created

    Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas of Tarbes and Lourdes, with Dr François Leuret, president of the Bureau des Constatations, set up a Lourdes Medical Committee in 1947, co-opting doctors and professors from outside the shrine; in 1954 the bishop gave it an international dimension and it became the International Medical Committee of Lourdes. Its task is to judge whether a cure the Medical Bureau has found "unexplained" is indeed unexplained on current medical knowledge, against the Lambertini criteria — complete and lasting, from a serious illness of unfavourable prognosis, and sudden — and then to send its opinion to the bishop concerned. Neither body declares a miracle: that act belongs to the bishop of the cured person. An earlier association, announced on 6 September 1925, had become the international A.M.I.L. in 1928.[19] [18]

  24. 19581958-03-25

    Lourdes, France

    Consecration of the underground Basilica of Saint Pius X

    The underground basilica of Saint Pius X, built in prestressed concrete to hold crowds the three earlier churches could not, is consecrated on 25 March 1958, the centenary year of the reported apparitions and the anniversary of the day the name "Immaculate Conception" was reported at the grotto. 25 March is the date the Sanctuary keeps as its dedication anniversary.[21] [20]

  25. 5 decades with no recorded events (1960–2009)
  26. 20182018-02-11

    Beauvais, France

    Sister Bernadette Moriau's cure declared the 70th recognized miracle

    Jacques Benoit-Gonnin, Bishop of Beauvais, Noyon and Senlis, states on 11 February 2018 — the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the World Day of the Sick — that he has decided "to recognize the 'prodigious-miraculous character'" of the cure reported by Sister Bernadette Moriau, a Franciscan Oblate of the Sacred Heart at Bresles, who had had cauda equina syndrome since 1987 and reported the cure on 11 July 2008 on returning from her diocese's Lourdes pilgrimage. The International Medical Committee of Lourdes had concluded on 18–19 November 2016 that the cure remained unexplained in the present state of scientific knowledge. The bishop's declaration is the datable event; the Sanctuary counts it as the 70th recognition.[25] [17]

  27. 20242024-12-08

    Liverpool, United Kingdom

    John Traynor's cure declared the 71st recognized miracle of Lourdes

    Malcolm McMahon, Archbishop of Liverpool, formally declares miraculous the 1923 cure of John Traynor, a Liverpool veteran of the First World War cured on 25 July 1923 during his archdiocese's first Lourdes pilgrimage; the Medical Bureau had recorded the cure as unexplained in October 1926. An example of the datable event this dataset records for cures: the bishop's act of recognition, with the count attributed to the Sanctuary.[7]

  28. 20252025-04-16

    Tursi, Italy

    Antonia Raco's cure declared the 72nd recognized miracle

    Vincenzo Carmine Orofino, Bishop of Tursi-Lagonegro, proclaims on 16 April 2025 the miraculous character of the cure reported by Antonia Raco (Mrs Lofiego), aged 67, who had primary lateral sclerosis and reported being able to walk again at the baths during the UNITALSI pilgrimage of 30 July – 5 August 2009. The proclamation rests on the International Medical Committee of Lourdes' 2024 vote that the recovery was "unexpected, complete, lasting and unexplained according to medical knowledge". The bishop's act is the datable event; the Sanctuary counts it as the 72nd, while an older page of its own site still says 70.[24] [5] [6]

Key figures

Bernadette Soubirous

1844–1879 · France

The visionary: reported the 18 apparitions of 1858 at the Massabielle grotto, held to her account through civil and ecclesiastical interrogations, and entered the Sisters of Charity of Nevers in 1866. Beatified in 1925 and canonized on 8 December 1933 by Pius XI.[9] [3]

Bertrand-Sévère Laurence

France

Bishop of Tarbes, the diocese containing Lourdes. Opened the commission of inquiry on 28 July 1858 and issued the decree of 18 January 1862 judging that the apparitions were real — the founding act of the Church's approval of Lourdes.[2]

Jacomet

France

Police commissioner of Lourdes in 1858; interrogated Bernadette on 21 February 1858. The civil authorities' skeptical interrogations are part of the contemporaneous documentation of the events. (His first name, given as Dominique in most accounts, is not stated on the Sanctuary page cited here.)[1]

Pius IX

Pope (1846–1878). Defined the dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus of 8 December 1854 — four years before Bernadette reported the words "I am the Immaculate Conception" at the grotto.[8]

Pius XI

Pope (1922–1939). Beatified Bernadette in 1925 and canonized her on 8 December 1933, the feast of the Immaculate Conception.[9] [10]

Related organizations

Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes

Lourdes, France

The shrine that grew around the Massabielle grotto after 1858, today run under the authority of the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes. Its official website is the primary attributed source for the apparition chronology and for the recognized-cure count used in this dataset.[1]

https://www.lourdes-france.com/en/

Lourdes Medical Bureau (Bureau des Constatations Médicales)

Founded 1883 · Lourdes, France

Permanent medical body of the Sanctuary, founded in 1883; it has opened more than 7,000 dossiers on claimed cures. It can find a cure "unexplained in the present state of science" — it is NOT the body that declares miracles; that declaration is a diocesan bishop's act, as this dataset records for each recognized cure.[4] [5]

Sisters of Charity of Nevers

Nevers, France

The congregation Bernadette joined in July 1866 at its Saint-Gildard motherhouse in Nevers, where she lived as Sister Marie-Bernard until her death in 1879. Distinct from the Sanctuary of Lourdes: the congregation is not the shrine's operator, and Nevers, not Lourdes, holds Bernadette's body.[9] [10]

International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL)

Founded 1954 · Lourdes, France

The Sanctuary's second medical body, distinct from the Medical Bureau. A Lourdes Medical Committee was set up in 1947 by Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas with Dr François Leuret; in 1954 it was given an international dimension and became the CMIL, about thirty members. It judges whether a cure the Bureau has found "unexplained" is unexplained on current medical knowledge, against the Lambertini criteria, and sends its opinion to the bishop of the cured person. Like the Bureau, it declares no miracle: that act is the bishop's, and it is the act this dataset dates.[19] [18]

Hospitalité Notre-Dame de Lourdes

Founded 1885 · Lourdes, France

The volunteer body founded in 1885 whose members — hospitaliers, drawn from all over the world — receive pilgrims at the shrine and accompany the sick and disabled among them, in rotation through the year. It is the Sanctuary's own permanent hospitality, distinct from the diocesan "hospitalities of accompaniment" that travel with a particular group and go home with it.[23]

Disambiguation & nuance

Lourdes is an approved apparition, but 'approved' is a precise, dated, attributable act — not a blanket endorsement, and not a historical finding this site could make in its own voice. These are the distinctions most often flattened.

Approved for pilgrimage is not the same as approved as an apparition — and that is the Church's rule, not this page's

A shrine, a crowned image, a feast, indulgences, a papal visit: it is reasonable to read all that as the Church saying the apparition happened. It is not what the Church says it is doing, and since 2024 it says so in writing. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith's "Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena" (17 May 2024) sets out six possible conclusions, and art. 23 makes the position explicit: "as a rule, neither the Diocesan Bishop, nor the Episcopal Conferences, nor the Dicastery will declare that these phenomena are of supernatural origin", though the Pope may authorise a special procedure. The ordinary favourable outcome is now "Nihil obstat", which art. 17 defines as acknowledging "many signs of the action of the Holy Spirit" in a spiritual experience "without expressing any certainty about the supernatural authenticity of the phenomenon itself". The document's own presentation adds that most shrines "have never had an official declaration of the supernatural nature of the events". The reason is what a private revelation is. Public revelation closed with the apostles, so no apparition adds an article of faith, and even an approved one obliges no one to believe — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said exactly that when it published the third part of the Fátima secret in 2000. What a bishop is actually asked is a pastoral question: is this devotion safe, is it free of doctrinal error, is it bearing good fruit? That can be answered yes without answering the historical question, and usually is. The same acts are granted to devotions with no apparition behind them at all — Our Lady of the Rosary and Our Lady of Mount Carmel have feasts, crowned images and basilicas, and there is no reported apparition to approve. So this page is not withholding approval; it is saying who gave which one, about what. Where a bishop did rule on an apparition, the ladder says so in his own words and marks the rung favourable — Lourdes 1862 and La Salette 1851 are quoted verbatim, Fátima 1930 is cited to its pastoral letter. What the ladder refuses to do is upgrade a crown into a verdict. If it did, a case a bishop examined and endorsed would look identical to a case nobody ever ruled on, because both have pilgrims; and the reverse error would follow just as easily, reading a Roman act against one seer's later writings as Rome condemning the apparition. Keeping the objects apart is the only way the chart carries information at all. Where the sources themselves say the Church's recognition is "implicit", the page records that word too, and does not promote it.[28]

Reported apparition ≠ established fact

What is documented is that Bernadette Soubirous reported 18 apparitions in 1858, that civil authorities interrogated her, and that Bishop Laurence's decree of 18 January 1862 judged the apparitions real. The dataset records the reports and the Church's dated judgments, citing the ruling documents; it does not assert the supernatural claim as fact.[2]

'Unexplained cure' ≠ 'recognized miracle'

The Medical Bureau (founded 1883) can find a cure medically unexplained; only the diocesan bishop of the cured person can declare it miraculous. Of more than 7,000 dossiers opened, the Sanctuary counts 72 recognitions (as of 2025) — the recognitions, not the cures, are the datable events recorded here, and the count is the Sanctuary's.[4] [5]

The dogma (1854) ≠ the reported statement (1858)

"The Immaculate Conception" was defined as dogma by Pius IX in Ineffabilis Deus on 8 December 1854, four years before Bernadette reported the phrase at the grotto. The apparition did not create the doctrine; the reported statement's force in the 1858–1862 inquiry lay precisely in its echo of the recent definition.[8] [1]

Lourdes (France) ≠ the world's Lourdes grottos

Thousands of replica Lourdes grottos exist in parishes worldwide (and 'Lourdes'/'Lurdes' place names in Brazil, Portugal, and elsewhere). They are devotional copies of the Massabielle grotto; the reported apparitions of 1858 and the 1862 recognition concern only the site in the diocese of Tarbes and Lourdes. Likewise, other Marian apparitions (Fátima, La Salette, Guadalupe) are separate events, each with its own distinct Church judgment.[1]

Crowning a statue, and a feast day, are not verdicts

The statue at the grotto was crowned in 1876 with a crown commissioned by Pius IX, and the memorial of the apparitions entered the Roman calendar in 1907. Both are acts of cult — an honour paid to an image, a devotion permitted and then universalised — and neither says anything about whether the apparitions happened. The only act that judged them is the bishop of Tarbes' decree of 18 January 1862; Pius XII's centenary encyclical of 1957 still credits the recognition to the diocese.[22] [12] [11]

References

28 sources · 28 with an Internet Archive fallback. Sources span the spectrum of perspectives by design; contested claims are attributed to their authors.

  1. The Apparitions · 🗄 archived 2026-05-19 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site of the shrine — the Church-affiliated primary account of the 18 reported apparitions, with dates and the reported words
  2. Recognition of the Apparitions · 🗄 archived 2026-02-18 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site — quotes the text of Bishop Laurence's decree of 18 January 1862 and dates the 28 July 1858 commission
  3. Bernadette Soubirous · 🗄 archived 2026-03-12 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (official site — biography of the visionary; gives birth, death and canonization dates) · official
  4. The Medical Bureau of the Sanctuary · 🗄 archived 2026-03-12 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site — founding (1883, Dr. Dunot de Saint-Maclou) and procedure of the Bureau des Constatations Médicales
  5. The Miracles · 🗄 archived 2026-02-14 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (official site — states 72 recognized cures since 1858, the most recent being Antonia Raco (2025)) · official
  6. The Miracles of Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-03-14 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (lourdes-france.org) · official older domain of the Sanctuary's own site; still states 70 recognized cures — retained deliberately to document that the attributed count moves as new recognitions are declared
  7. John Traynor, 71st miracle at Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-03-14 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site — the 8 December 2024 declaration by the Archbishop of Liverpool, with the 1923 cure and 1926 Bureau finding
  8. Ineffabilis Deus — Apostolic Constitution of Pius IX (8 December 1854) · 🗄 archived 2026-07-19 Holy See (vatican.va) · official
  9. St. Bernadette of Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-02-18 Encyclopaedia Britannica (independent encyclopedia — used for biographical dates (birth, Nevers, death, canonization)) · encyclopedia
  10. Bernadette Soubirous · 🗄 archived 2026-07-16 Wikipedia · encyclopedia crowd-sourced encyclopedia — used only for uncontested biographical details (postulant's habit 29 July 1866; beatification 14 June 1925), flagged where it is the sole source
  11. Le Pèlerinage de Lourdes — Encyclical of Pius XII (2 July 1957) · 🗄 archived 2026-05-13 Holy See (vatican.va) · official Holy See — the centenary encyclical; it credits the approval to the diocese ("wisely put to the test by episcopal authority and approved as early as 1862") and describes the Roman acts as liturgical (Leo XIII's grant of the proper Office and Mass in 1892, extended to the universal Church shortly after)
  12. 11 February: Our Lady of Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-03-09 Vatican City State · official official Vatican City State page — quotes the Bishop of Tarbes' judgment of 18 January 1862 as the recognition and dates the insertion of the liturgical memorial into the Roman calendar to 1907, naming no Roman act on authenticity
  13. Decree granting a Plenary Indulgence on the 150th Anniversary of the Apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Lourdes (21 November 2007) · 🗄 archived 2025-12-30 Apostolic Penitentiary (vatican.va) · official Holy See — cited as the worked example of what Roman acts on Lourdes actually are: a grant of indulgences for the anniversary year, carrying no judgment on the apparitions
  14. Acta Apostolicae Sedis — archive of volumes · 🗄 archived 2026-07-25 Holy See (vatican.va) · index official gazette of the Holy See — cited for what a search of it can and cannot establish: the series begins in 1909, after the 1862 diocesan decree and the 1907 calendar insertion, so the acts at issue here would fall in the earlier Acta Sanctae Sedis series
  15. Friday 16th July 1858 — the 18th and final apparition · 🗄 archived 2025-01-24 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (lourdes-france.org) · official official site — the Sanctuary's own narrative of the weeks between the 7 April and 16 July 1858 apparitions; the only official source located for the closing of the grotto ("the authorities to prohibit access to the grotto from 15th June. Signs, boards, barricades are put up") and for the bishop of Tarbes' own short-lived ban on Catholics going there
  16. Apparitions mariales de Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-04-02 Wikipédia (FR) · encyclopedia crowd-sourced encyclopedia — cited only for the civil side of 1858, where no official source was reachable: the barricading of the grotto (which it dates 7 June, against the Sanctuary's 15 June) and the reopening ordered by Napoleon III on 5 October 1858. Flagged as the sole source for both, and the event carries an unverified date
  17. Miraculous healings — the 72 recognized cures · 🗄 archived 2026-05-19 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site — the Sanctuary's own list of the 72 cures recognized as miraculous, giving for each the person, the town and the DATE OF RECOGNITION. It is the source for every count in this dataset (7 recognitions on 18 January 1862; 33 between 1907 and 1913, of which 20 in 1908 alone) and for the statement that more than 7,000 cures have been reported. It names no declaring bishop and, for most cases, no date of cure — a limit of the source, recorded here rather than filled in
  18. Recognition of a miracle · 🗄 archived 2026-03-05 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site — the three-stage procedure (Medical Bureau → International Medical Committee → the bishop), the Lambertini criteria a cure must meet, and the Sanctuary's own statement that the declaration belongs to the bishop and not to either medical body
  19. The Medical Bureau of the Sanctuary (lourdes-france.org) · 🗄 archived 2026-03-14 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (lourdes-france.org) · official official site — the institutional history the .com page omits: the Association Médicale de Notre-Dame de Lourdes announced 6 September 1925, its transformation into the international A.M.I.L. with a first bulletin in February 1928, the Lourdes Medical Committee set up in 1947 by Bishop Pierre-Marie Théas with Dr François Leuret, and the 1954 creation of the International Medical Committee of Lourdes (CMIL)
  20. 6th October, dedication of the Rosary Basilica · 🗄 archived 2026-03-12 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site (3 October 2023) — the Sanctuary's own account of the Rosary church: first stone laid 16 July 1883 by Cardinal Desprez, Leo XIII's apostolic letter 'Parta humano generi' of 8 September 1901, consecration by Cardinal Langénieux as papal delegate on Sunday 6 October 1901, and elevation to minor basilica by Pius XI's apostolic brief of 24 September 1926. Also gives the four dedication anniversaries the Sanctuary keeps (25 March, 19 May, 2 July, 6 October) and notes that the minutes of the consecration are in the Sanctuary's archives
  21. The 3 basilicas of Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-04-21 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (lourdes-france.org) · official official site — the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception begun 1866, blessed 15 August 1871 and consecrated 1 July 1876; the Rosary Basilica blessed 7 August 1889 and consecrated 6 October 1901; the Basilica of Saint Pius X consecrated 25 March 1958 for the centenary. Its 1 July 1876 disagrees with the 2 July anniversary the Sanctuary's other site keeps — the disagreement is recorded, not resolved
  22. 150th anniversary of the crowning of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-06-07 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes (lourdes-france.org) · official official site (4 May 2026) — announces the 150th anniversary of the crowning of the statue, placing the crowning in 1876, and describes the golden crown made by the Paris goldsmith Mellerio. The Sanctuary's own gloss on what a crowning means ("not just a matter of placing a precious adornment") is devotional and is not adopted here
  23. Christian hospitality at Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-03-14 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site (19 August 2024) — dates the Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes to 1885 and distinguishes it from the diocesan 'hospitalities of accompaniment' that travel with their own groups
  24. Antonia Raco — 72nd Lourdes miracle · 🗄 archived 2026-02-18 Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes · official official site — the 16 April 2025 proclamation by Mgr Vincenzo Carmine Orofino, Bishop of Tursi-Lagonegro, following the International Medical Committee of Lourdes' 2024 vote; gives the illness, the UNITALSI pilgrimage of 30 July – 5 August 2009 and the wording the bishop's decision rests on
  25. Le 70e miracle de Lourdes officiellement reconnu par l'évêque de Beauvais · 🗄 archived 2026-01-25 Conférence des évêques de France (eglise.catholique.fr) · news the French Bishops' Conference's own news service (12 February 2018) — an official-Church source, sympathetic by nature. Cited for the bishop's formula ("J'ai décidé de reconnaître le « caractère prodigieux-miraculeux » de cette guérison"), his full title, the date of the declaration, the CMIL session of 18–19 November 2016 and the 11 July 2008 date of the reported cure. Used because the Sanctuary's list gives no declaring bishop and the Diocese of Beauvais' own page for the message is now unreachable (HTTP 404)
  26. La Crypte (Lourdes) · 🗄 archived 2026-06-08 Lourdes Tourist Office · official the town's own tourist office — a CIVIL, municipal source rather than an ecclesiastical one, and one with an interest in promoting the site. Cited only for an uncontested building fact the Sanctuary's pages give without a year: the crypt was opened on 19 May 1866 and holds about 120 people
  27. The pilgrim popes of Lourdes · 🗄 archived 2026-06-07 Sanctuaire Notre-Dame de Lourdes · official The shrine's own account of what each pope did for Lourdes — institutional and warmly sympathetic, which is what makes it useful here. It lists Leo XIII approving prayers and indulgences, Pius X opening Bernadette's cause, Pius XI beatifying and canonizing her, Pius XII's 1957 encyclical and the modern papal pilgrimages, and it nowhere says that a pope approved or recognised the apparitions. A page written to celebrate papal favour, not claiming the one favour the devotional literature most often asserts.
  28. Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena (17 May 2024) · 🗄 archived 2026-07-24 Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Holy See · official The Church's current procedure for judging reported apparitions, in force since 19 May 2024; its art. 27 entirely replaces the norms of 25 February 1978. Read in full for this dataset. Cited here for the rule it states rather than for anything it decides about this case: it is not applied retroactively, and no case in this chronology was judged under it.