The life of Bernadette Soubirous, the 18 apparitions of 1858 and the relics kept in the family home.
A human story told by us, her descendants
DiscoverThe true story as our family saw it
DiscoverSix objects unique in the world, kept by our family for six generations
DiscoverThe Moulin Lacadé in Lourdes — Our family home for six generations
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When people speak of Bernadette Soubirous, they often forget that she had a family. Ordinary people who lived through extraordinary things without ever choosing to.
We are the sixth generation of that family. Between them and us lie 158 years of unbroken transmission. We keep their story. The one we tell each other from generation to generation, with the details no one else knows.
François Soubirous is born in Lourdes into a family of millers. He learns the trade very young.
He marries Louise Castérot. Like him, she comes from a family of millers. They settle at the Moulin de Boly, on the banks of the Lapaca, a small water mill.
7 January 1844. Their first daughter is born. They name her Marie-Bernarde. She will be called Bernadette.
A day like any other. François is dressing a millstone, chisel in one hand, hammer in the other. One stroke too many. A splinter breaks off and puts out his left eye.
The blood. The pain striking like lightning. He screams. Louise comes running, her heart pounding. She sees her husband on the ground, his hand over his face, blood running between his fingers.
His sight is diminished. So is his precision at work. And a miller who can no longer see well can no longer truly practise his trade.
The customers notice. Little by little, they take their business elsewhere and the mill turns less and less. Money starts to run short.
Between 1844 and 1856, Louise brings nine children into the world.
But five will never grow up. Cholera takes one. Fever takes another. Malnutrition weakens two more until they fade away. The last is stillborn, not even registered with the civil authorities. Four small coffins carried to the Égalité cemetery in Lourdes. Four times the couple weeps before a grave that is too small.
Meanwhile, the debts pile up. The miller borrows to keep the mill running. He borrows again, and promises to repay. But not enough money comes in. The customers are gone. How can he repay with no income?
The owner eventually loses patience, and takes back the Moulin de Boly. The family must leave.
They move to a smaller house. Then, a few months later, to an even smaller one. They go down. Step after step. Towards the bottom.
February 1857. The Soubirous family moves into the Cachot, a disused former prison cell. 14 m² for six people. No window at the time, just a small barred opening in the wall that barely lets in any light. The floor is beaten earth. The walls ooze damp. The smell of mould never goes away.
The father looks for work wherever he can. Mason. Porter. Anything. But who wants to hire a one-eyed man of 50? He earns a few coins here and there, not enough to feed six mouths.
What eats away at him is not so much the poverty itself. It is the humiliation of having become the man who can no longer feed his family, and who lives in a prison.
March 1857. Two sacks of flour go missing in Lourdes. The gendarmes come knocking at the door of the Cachot. They are looking for the father of the family.
“It was you, Soubirous. We know you're starving. You stole the flour.”
He protests, François is innocent. But who will believe a pauper living in a former prison cell? He is arrested, and locked up for several days.
A few days later, he is released. Lack of evidence. But the damage is done. In Lourdes, everyone now looks at him as a thief. The irony is cruel: his daughter speaks of apparitions of the Virgin Mary, and he is suspected of stealing flour.
February 1865. Monseigneur Laurence, the Bishop of Tarbes, rents the Moulin Lacadé for the family. In 1867, after Louise's death, the bishop buys the house and makes it over to François.
At last he has a roof that belongs to him. A real roof. With solid walls, bedrooms upstairs. He will live there until his death, on 4 March 1871.
Louise Castérot is born in Lourdes, a miller's daughter, and grows up amid the smell of flour and the constant noise of the millstones. She is a hard worker, a woman afraid of nothing.
In 1843, she is 18 when she marries François Soubirous, who is 36. She loves him, and believes in him.
Between 1844 and 1856, Louise gives birth nine times. Nine times she endures the contractions, the pain and the blood.
Four of these children die before the age of ten, a fifth is born lifeless. Four children's coffins, and four times Louise washes the small, cold body.
You never get over it. But you carry on. Because the other four remain. Bernadette, Toinette, Jean-Marie, Pierre.
Louise is 32. She lives in the Cachot with her one-eyed husband and her four children, six people in 14 m².
Every morning, she gets up, fetches water from the well, washes the laundry of the rich, scrubs their floors. In the evening, she comes home with bleeding hands, lays the few coins on the table, makes a meal out of almost nothing, puts the children to bed and collapses. The next day, she starts again.
She never cries in front of the children. Never. Because if she cries, they will think it is all over.
11 February 1858. Bernadette sees “a lady” in the rock of Massabielle. She makes her sister Toinette and her friend Baloume promise to tell no one. But as soon as they return to the Cachot, Toinette cannot hold her tongue: Louise learns everything, flies into a rage, slaps Bernadette and forbids her to return to the grotto.
Jean-Marie is born at the Moulin de Boly. The third child of François and Louise. Bernadette's brother. He is 7 when the apparitions begin.
François dies. Jean-Marie is 20. It is he who inherits the house, the furniture, the objects, the relics of Bernadette. He could sell everything. Start over somewhere else. But he decides to keep it all.
He keeps the bed where his father died. Bernadette's letters. The christening gown she embroidered. He keeps everything. Because Bernadette is not just a saint in books. She is his sister.
Pilgrims begin to knock at the door. It is Pierre, Bernadette's younger brother and godson, who opens the house to them and creates the shop. He shows them the rooms, tells the true story, the Cachot, the destitution, the accusation of theft. He welcomes the pilgrims without asking for anything.
Jean-Marie, for his part, passes the house on to his son Jean-Bernard, who passes it to Bernard-Jean, who passes it to Françoise, who passes it to Pierre and Anne. That is us. Six generations. Six times the same instruction: “Don't sell. Throw nothing away. Tell the story.”
Bernadette does not come out of nowhere. She comes from a family that knew destitution, sickness, death, humiliation. François accused of theft. Louise scrubbing floors with bleeding hands. Jean-Marie keeping everything and passing it on.
Without them, there would have been no Bernadette. Without them, we would not be here.
We are the sixth generation of the Soubirous family. We have kept this house since 1867. We have been telling the true story for six generations.
Come and hear the story of François, Louise and Jean-Marie Soubirous.
We look forward to seeing you.
The christening gown, the letters, the missal: everything can be seen in the house, presented by the family.
or call us on 05 62 94 22 51