Bernadette Soubirous was born in 1844, to a destitute miller in the town of Lourdes in southern France. She was first of nine children and suffered from poor health after having contracted cholera as a child.
 
On Thursday, February 11, 1858, the fourteen-year-old Bernadette was sent with her younger sister and a friend to gather firewood, when a very beautiful lady appeared to her above a rose bush in a grotto called Massabielle. The woman wore blue and white and smiled at Bernadette before making the sign of the cross with a rosary of ivory and gold. Bernadette immediately knelt and began to pray her rosary even though her sister and friend claimed they were unable to see the woman.
 
Three days later, Bernadette returned to the grotto with her sister and other girls, when she agin said she saw the "petito damizelo," (meaning "small young lady"). One girl promptly threw holy water at the invisible woman, and another threw a rock that shattered on the ground. It was then that the apparition disappeared.
 
On February 18, Bernadette said "the vision" asked her to return to the grotto each day for a fortnight. With each visit, Bernadette saw the Virgin Mary and the period of daily visions became known as "la Quinzaine sacrée," meaning "holy fortnight." Although Bernadette’s initial reports provoked skepticism, her daily visions of “the Lady” brought great crowds of the curious. The Lady, Bernadette explained, had instructed her to have a chapel built on the spot of the visions. There, the people were to come to wash in and drink of the water of the spring that had welled up where Bernadette had been instructed to dig.
 
According to Bernadette, the Lady of her visions was a girl of sixteen or seventeen who wore a white robe with a blue sash. Yellow roses covered her feet, a large rosary was on her right arm. In the vision on March 25, she told Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was only when the words were explained to her that Bernadette came to realize who the Lady was. After this, Bernadette's story created a division in her town with many believing she was telling the truth, while others believed she had a mental illness and demanded she be put in an asylum.
 
Lourdes soon became one of the most popular Marian shrines in the world, but Bernadette was perpetually hounded by the public and subjected to interrogations by civic officials. She finally went to stay at the hospice school run by the Sisters of Charity of Nevers, where she was taught to read and write. Since her health prevented her from becoming a Carmelite, she joined the Sisters of Charity and spent the rest of her life there working as an infirmary assistant, and later as a sacristan. Once a nun asked her if she had temptations of pride because she was favored by the Blessed Mother. "How can I?" she answered quickly. "The Blessed Virgin chose me only because I was the most ignorant."
 
After she was diagnosed with tuberculosis, Bernadette suffered severe pain and would frequently say of her sufferings, "All this is good for Heaven!" Her last words were, "Blessed Mary, Mother of God, pray for me. A poor sinner, a poor sinner." She died in the Holy Cross Infirmary of the Convent of Saint-Gildard at the age of 35 on April 16, 1879.
 
This print is part of the "Happy Saint" collection by Anna Morelli.
 
The image is professionally printed, hand-signed by the artist, and comes enclosed in a plastic sleeve to ensure protection