Lourdes: Bernadette's uncorrupted body, the last mystery

Bernadette, the last mystery of Lourdes That intact body forgotten by the faithful
by Vittorio Messori

With a congress in Rimini, celebrations for the hundredth anniversary of Unitalsi began last week. It is a somewhat bureaucratic theme that hides, in reality, the generous commitment of three hundred thousand people, present in every diocese, to bring sick and healthy people especially to Lourdes, but also to the other sacred places of Catholicism. The beginnings, in 1903, are due to a Roman anticlerical, Giambattista Tommasi, who wanted to commit suicide in the cave of Massabielle, also to protest against "the obscurantist Catholic superstition". In fact, not only did the pistol fall from his hands but, suddenly converted, he devoted the rest of his life to helping poor infirm people to reach the banks of the River Gave. Also to this Italian National Union for the Transport of the Sick to Lourdes and International Sanctuaries (as well as to the younger but equally active sister, Oftal, Federative Work for the Transport of the Sick to Lourdes), the statistics that a little worry transalpine pride are due. That is, Italian pilgrims are often more numerous in the Pyrenean town than French ones. Those who know Lourdes know that everyone there is able to speak a little Italian, the newspapers of the Peninsula have been on newsstands since the early morning, only espresso coffee is served in the bars, in the hotels the pasta is impeccably al dente. And it is precisely to the generosity of the members of Unitalsi, Oftal and, in general, of the Italians, that we have large reception structures that combine efficiency with the affectionate warmth of assistance. Among the few words of the white lady are those of March 2, 1858: "I want you to come here in procession". Aside from France, in no other country like Italy has that exhortation been taken so seriously: and the influx shows no sign of diminishing; indeed, it grows year by year. Someone, however, at the recent assembly in Rimini pointed out that, if the pilgrims in Lourdes exceeded five million a year, only half a million - one in ten - are those who also visit Nevers. Many, for some time, have asked the Associations for greater commitment to increase arrivals in this city on the Loire, almost halfway between Lyon and Paris. Also tied to Italy (the Gonzaga of Mantua were dukes), Nevers has an exciting surprise in store for the devotees of the Immaculate Conception. We ourselves have seen pilgrims suddenly burst into sobs at an unexpected and shocking sight.

Entering the courtyard of the convent of Saint Gildard, the mother house of the "Sisters of Charity", you enter the church through a side door. The semi-darkness, perennial in this neo-Gothic architecture of the nineteenth century, is broken by the lights that illuminate an artistic funerary glass case. The small body (one meter and forty-two centimeters) of a nun seems to sleep with her hands folded around a rosary and her head reclined on the left. They are the remains, intact 124 years after his death, of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the one on whose miserable chronically ill shoulders rests the weight of the most popular sanctuary in the world. She alone, in fact, saw, listened, reported the little that he said to her: Aquerò («Quella là», in the dialect of Bigorre), testifying with her uninterrupted suffering the truth of what had been announced to her: «I don't promise to be happy in this life but in the other ».

At the Nevers Novitiate, Bernadette arrived in 1866. Without ever moving, ("I came here to hide," she said arriving) she spent 13 years there, until her death, on April 16, 1879. She was only 35 years old, but her body he was consumed by an impressive series of pathologies, to which moral suffering had been added. When his coffin was lowered into the vault, dug in the earth, of a chapel in the garden of the convent, everything suggested that that tiny body eaten also by gangrene would soon dissolve. In fact, that body has reached us intact, even in the internal organs, defying any physical law. A Jesuit historian and scientist, Father André Ravier, recently published the full accounts of the three exhumations, based on unassailable documentation. In fact, in anti-clerical France between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, every opening of the sepulcher was attended by suspects, doctors, magistrates, police and city officials. Their official reports have all been kept by the fussy French administration.

The first exhumation, for the beginning of the beatification process, took place in 1909, thirty years after his death. At the opening of the box, some elderly nuns, who had seen Bernadette on their deathbed, passed out and had to be rescued: in their eyes the sister appeared not only intact, but as transfigured by death, with no more signs of suffering on her face. The relationship of the two doctors is categorical: the humidity was such as to have destroyed the clothes and even the rosary, but the body of the religious had not been affected, so much so that even teeth, nails, hair were all in their place and skin and muscles they were elastic to the touch. "The thing - the sanitary wrote, confirmed by the reports of the magistrates and the gendarmes present - does not seem natural, also considering that other corpses, buried in the same place, have dissolved and that the body of Bernadette, flexible and elastic, has not not even a mummification that explains its conservation immediately ».

The second exhumation took place ten years later, in 1919. The two doctors, this time, were famous primary and each, after the reconnaissance, was isolated in a room to write his report without consulting with his colleague. The situation, both wrote, had remained the same as the previous time: no sign of dissolution, no unpleasant smell. The only difference was a certain darkening of the skin, probably due to the washing of the corpse, ten years earlier.

The third and final reconnaissance was in 1925, on the eve of the beatification. Forty-six years after his death - and in the usual presence of not only religious, but also health and civil authorities - the autopsy could proceed without difficulty on the corpse, still intact. The two luminaries who practiced it then published a report in a scientific journal, where they signaled to colleagues' attention the fact (which they considered "more than ever inexplicable") of the perfect preservation of the internal organs too, including the liver, intended more than any other body part to a rapid decomposition. Given the situation, it was decided to keep accessible to the eye that body that appeared not of a dead woman, but of a sleeper waiting for awakening. A light mask was applied to the face and hands, but only because it was feared that visitors would be struck by the darkened skin and eyes, intact under the eyelids, but a little sunken.

It is certain, however, that under that sort of make-up and under that ancient dress of the "Sisters of charity", there is really the Bernadette who died in 1879, mysteriously and forever fixed in a beauty that time does not he took away but returned. A few years ago, for a documentary for Rai Tre, I was allowed to shoot close-up images never allowed before at night, so as not to disturb the pilgrims. A nun opened the case glass, a goldsmith's masterpiece. Hesitantly, I touched one of the tiny Santa's small arms with a finger. The immediate sensation of elasticity and freshness of that meat, dead for the "world" for more than 120 years, remains for me among the indelible emotions. Indeed, between Unitalsi and Oftal they do not seem to be wrong in wanting to draw attention to Nevers' enigma, often ignored by the crowds converging on the Pyrenees.

Source: http://www.corriere.it (Archive)