Fourteen-year-old Marie Bernarde “Bernadette” Soubirous had never been considered an important person. She had a hard time in class and struggled with asthma-like symptoms. However, on February 11, 1858, she was searching for firewood near the grotto of Lourdes when she encountered a mysterious girl, around 16 or 17 years old, who was surrounded by light.
The Lady would later come to introduce herself as the “Immaculate Conception.”
From February 11th to July 16th, Bernadette would see the apparition 18 times. The Lady spoke about the need to pray for conversion in the world and asked the priests to establish a chapel where the faithful should go in procession. Throughout, Bernadette had to deal with people—including public officials—who thought she was a fraud.
“I have been asked to tell you about it, not to make you believe it,” was her quick-witted reply.
One of the most famous moments happened on February 25th, when Bernadette began rooting around in the mud near the grotto, since the Lady had told her to drink and wash in “the spring”…even though no spring existed.
Not yet, anyway.
After Bernadette scooped out handfuls of mud, a spring eventually bubbled up from the earth: the same spring that pilgrims can journey to Lourdes and drink from today.
To date, over 7,000 Lourdes-related healings have been reported, with over 70 affirmed as miraculous. “Most of the people were healed by contact with Lourdes water (50), most of them at the Sanctuary’s baths,” according to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes.
However, even if pilgrims don’t experience a miraculous healing, many who have been to Lourdes experience a healing of the soul through drawing closer to Christ through the Blessed Mother’s guidance.
When I visited Lourdes as a 13-year-old—one year younger than Bernadette was at the time of the apparitions—I didn’t see a Marian apparition. And yet I believe I did see Our Lady of Lourdes, in a way.
Although many of the millions of pilgrims who pray at the Marian apparition site each year are suffering from physical or mental illnesses, there’s a presence of peace there that you’d have to experience to believe. I believe I caught a glimpse of Our Lady of Lourdes in the incredible joy saturating the entire town in Southern France.
I know I will never forget how it felt to soak that peace in.
Bernadette never forgot what it was like to be in the presence of the Blessed Mother, and she tried to convey that through the way she lived, saying, “I want my whole life to be inspired by love.” After she died at 35 years old, she was declared a saint in 1933.
Through her witness, St. Bernadette has brought me, and millions of others, to a closer encounter with Jesus. And the great news is, beginning September 18, 2026, St. Bernadette’s relics will be coming to the United States.
If her relics’ past visit to the U.S. in 2022 is any indication, God is continuing to transform lives through St. Bernadette’s prayers.
What is the United States Tour of the Relics of St. Bernadette?
The year 2022 was a ground-breaking year for the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, France. That was the year when the Sanctuary brought St. Bernadette’s relics to the U.S. for the first time.
The 2022 USA tour logged 45 stops stretching from coast to coast. The first stop was Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Miami, Florida, on April 7, 2022. The final stop happened almost four months later at St. John Baptist de la Salle Parish in Granada Hills, California, on August 3, 2022.
Monsignor Kenneth Schwanger, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Miami, was instrumental in coordinating the tour, contacting “all of the parishes and institutions dedicated either to Our Lady of Lourdes or to St. Bernadette in the country to ask them if they would be interested.”
“At the end, more requested the visit than could be arranged for, so they were promised [a visit] the next time,” he said.
Faith communities testified to incredible spiritual experiences, as recorded on the tour website.
At Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Mineral Wells, Texas, more than 3,000 attendees came to pray with the relics from July 20-22, 2022, including some from Colombia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico.
Fr. Victor Ulto from St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, shared of his parish’s April 19-21 visit: “Confessions are non-stop, the level of prayer is intense…This week has reminded me why I became a priest.”
According to Fr. Joseph Wolfe from the EWTN Chapel in Irondale, Alabama, which hosted the relics on April 30, 2022, “One woman told me that she received healing from respiratory and digestive problems.”
Monsignor Schwanger recounted, “Many of the parishes, especially the smaller ones, said they hadn’t seen that many people in their church in ages.”
Now, in 2026, St. Bernadette’s relics are returning: and this time, the tour is going to be even bigger.
The 2026-2027 U.S. tour will stretch from September 18, 2026, through August 2027, stopping at approximately 140 locations along the way. This time, the first stop on September 18-20, 2026, will be at North America’s largest Catholic church, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
The full tour schedule is currently in progress as more stops are updated across the country.
According to Toni J. Pallatto, one of the official U.S. representatives coordinating the relics tour, “The interesting thing is how many locations [St. Bernadette] wants to visit. She’s going to be here [in the U.S.] for almost one year.” Additionally, unlike the previous time, the 2026-2027 tour includes stops at university campuses, including at Pope Leo XIV’s alma mater, Villanova University in Pennsylvania.
This time, St. Bernadette and Our Lady of Lourdes “have a mission not only for parishes, basilicas, and cathedrals, but also for outreach to the youth of our country, who are the future of Catholicism,” said Pallatto.
The fact that this year’s tour coincides with the USA’s 250th anniversary isn’t the only beautiful US-Lourdes connection, she noted.
“Pope Leo XIV is going to Lourdes, France, on September 27th,” she said. “We had no knowledge that the pope was going to be in Lourdes on September 27th, but the relics’ visit to Villanova was [already] scheduled on the 28th.”
“So you see Mary’s hand in arranging the schedule,” she added.
How can I participate?
The best way to find out about the 2026-2027 tour stops is to view the schedule and sign up for email alerts, as stops continue to be added.
For those unable to travel to one of the tour stops, you can submit prayer requests that will be printed out, joining other USA tour intentions to be physically transported to Lourdes, France.
Users of the Hallow prayer app will also have the opportunity to engage in a special prayer journey.
St. Bernadette can become a friend to people coming from all types of backgrounds. She can relate to students who have been told they’re not smart enough. She can sympathize with people who have struggled financially or grown up in poverty, and she knows what it’s like to be challenged by health problems.
But she also knows what it’s like to encounter the love of God.
The Blessed Virgin Mary transformed her life. She spoke to Bernadette with a kindness that astonished her: she was used to being seen as nobody special.
That’s not who she was in Mary’s eyes.
Throughout her life, St. Bernadette strove to bring people to God. Monsignor Schwanger encourages everyone to encounter the saint’s friendship by coming to a relics tour stop near them.
“Information only takes you so far: the real thing is the experience,” as Monsignor Schwanger put it. “I just invite everyone to show up, be present, to have the experience for themselves.”
Image from Wikimedia Commons
