Between February 11 and July 16, 1858, a poor and asthmatic fourteen-year-old, Bernadette Soubirous, saw a lady at the grotto of Massabielle near Lourdes in the French Pyrenees on eighteen occasions. On March 25 the lady identified herself with the words Bernadette did not understand and had to repeat all the way home: "I am the Immaculate Conception." The local bishop declared the apparitions worthy of belief in 1862, four years after they began, and Pope Saint Pius X extended the celebration to the universal Church in 1907. It is kept as an optional memorial, so the Mass and Office of the day may be used instead where local custom prefers. Lourdes became one of the great pilgrimage places of the Catholic world, visited each year by millions, many of them sick or disabled and accompanied by volunteers and medical personnel. The Church has recognized a small number of cures there as miraculous after long and deliberately severe medical and theological examination; far more common, and more to the point of the shrine, is the consolation of those who are not cured. The washing in the spring water, the candlelight procession, and the daily Rosary at the grotto are its best-known customs. In 1992 Saint John Paul II established the World Day of the Sick on this date. Parishes commonly mark it by celebrating the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick within Mass, by prayer for caregivers, and by visits to the homebound. The Mass is celebrated in white, and the prayers ask that those weighed down by illness may find help in Mary's intercession. The Church's teaching keeps the emphasis where the Gospel puts it: private revelation, even when approved, adds nothing to the deposit of faith, and its value lies in helping the faithful live the Gospel more fully in a particular time.

Optional memorial

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Ordinary time

February 11

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