Bernadette was born in Lourdes on January 7, 1844, the eldest child of a miller who lost his mill; by 1858 the family lived in a single room in a former jail. On February 11 that year, gathering firewood by the river Gave, she saw a lady in the hollow of the rock at Massabielle. Eighteen apparitions followed through July 16. On February 25 she was told to dig in the ground and drink; the spring she uncovered still flows.
On March 25 the lady told her, in the local dialect, 'I am the Immaculate Conception,' words Bernadette did not understand but carried to the parish priest. The bishop of Tarbes recognized the apparitions in 1862. In 1866 Bernadette entered the Sisters of Charity at Nevers, in central France, where she nursed, kept the sacristy and was often ill herself. She died there on April 16, 1879, at thirty-five.
Pius XI beatified her in 1925 and canonized her on December 8, 1933. Her body rests in a glass reliquary in the chapel of the convent of Saint-Gildard in Nevers. In Lourdes, pilgrims visit the mill where she was born, the cachot where the family lived, and the grotto itself.