February 11, 1858: First Apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes
On this day dedicated to Mary, we commemorate the 97th Anniversary of the founding of the Vatican City State
It was Thursday, February 11, 1858, when the Virgin Mary appeared to fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous at the Grotto of Massabielle in Lourdes. It was the first of eighteen apparitions.
That day, Bernadette, together with her sister and a friend, set out along the River Gave toward Massabielle to gather dry wood. As she was about to remove her stockings to cross the river, she heard what sounded like a gust of wind. She raised her head toward the Grotto and later recounted: “I saw a lady dressed in white. She wore a white dress, a white veil, a blue sash, and a yellow rose on each foot.” Bernadette made the sign of the cross and prayed the Rosary with the Lady, who disappeared as soon as the prayer ended.
To commemorate the apparitions, a faithful replica of the Grotto of Lourdes was erected in the Vatican Gardens, overlooking the square of the same name. In 1902, Pope Leo XIII asked Monsignor François-Xavier Schoepfer, Bishop of Tarbes—within whose diocese Lourdes is located—to reproduce, on a smaller scale, the Marian shrine as it appeared at that time. The marble statue placed in the niche is similar to the one sculpted by Joseph Fabisch in 1864. It represents the Virgin as described by Bernadette in the apparition of March 25, 1858, when, in response to the young girl who asked her name, Our Lady, with hands joined and eyes raised to heaven, said: “I am the Immaculate Conception.”
The Grotto in the Vatican Gardens was inaugurated on March 28, 1905, by Pope Saint Pius X.
At the center of the Grotto stands the original altar of Massabielle, built in 1908 for the fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions. At Lourdes it was dismantled in 1956 to be replaced by a stone altar and, four years later, was donated to Pope Saint John XXIII by the Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes, Monsignor Pierre-Marie Théas.
On the day when the Church celebrates the liturgical memorial of the apparitions of Lourdes, the 97th Anniversary of the founding of the Vatican City State is also commemorated. It was, in fact, on February 11, 1929, that the Lateran Pacts were signed, establishing that “for the purpose of assuring the Holy See’s absolute and visible independence, and to guarantee its indisputable sovereignty even for international matters, it was deemed necessary to constitute, under special conditions the Vatican City State, recognizing the Holy See’s full ownership and its exclusive and absolute sovereign authority and jurisdiction over it.”
