Lourdes is one of the best known pilgrimage sites in Christianity and dates back to the apparitions received by Bernadette Soubirous. Bernadette was a 14 year old girl born of an impoverished miller. From February to July 1858 Bernadette claimed that the Virgin Mary showed herself to Bernadette 18 times and revealed herself as the “Immaculate Conception”. This irrelevant town soon became known for the dramatic and inspirational healings that had occurred there and has always been a place of controversy. In the grotto’s history is an event in which authorities attempted to fence off the grotto but soon met with a gruesomely fierce resistance of the believers of these apparitions. The fame and miraculous events of this grotto soon changed the
