In this day in 1858 in southern France, Bernadette Soubirous, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a French miller, first had a vision of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ and a central figure in the Catholic religion. Over the next year, the girl saw the Virgin a total of seventeen more times. These visions occurred in the grotto of a rock promontory at Massabielle near Lourdes. Bernadette said that the Virgin Mary asked that a chapel be built on the site of the vision, and that Mary told the girl to drink from a fountain in the grotto, which she subsequently discovered by digging into the earth. In time, Bernadette received the religious habit of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity, receiving the name Sister Marie-Bernard. She died in 1925,
and was cannonized by Pope Pius XI in 1933. Sister Marie-Bernard is now
remembered as St. Bernadette. The fountain, meanwhile, has been the site of many miraculous healings. This all just goes to show you: Even today, miracles can and often do happen.