History
A Catholic History of Lourdes
Lourdes was a small castle town in the diocese of Tarbes until 1858, when Bernadette Soubirous, the daughter of a ruined miller, saw the Lady eighteen times at Massabielle. The bishop recognized the apparitions on 18 January 1862. A chapel, three basilicas, a medical bureau and the great national pilgrimages followed, and the sick came first from the start. Bernadette left for Nevers in 1866 and was canonized in 1933. Four popes have come as pilgrims, the latest being Pope Leo XIV on 26 and 27 September 2026.
Before 1844
A Castle Town in Bigorre
Before the apparitions Lourdes was a market town of about 4,000 people under a castle on a rock, where the road leaves the plain for the Pyrenean valleys. Its parish church was Saint-Pierre, on today's place Peyramale. The region already had Marian shrines born of a shepherdess, a spring and a request for a chapel, at Garaison and Bétharram, and Bishop Bertrand-Sévère Laurence of Tarbes spent years reviving them. When Lourdes became famous, its people had long known this kind of story.