The Incorrupt Body of Saint Bernadette Soubirous

Bernadette Soubirous died at the Convent of Saint-Gildard in Nevers on April 16, 1879, aged 35, after years of suffering from tuberculosis of the bone and chronic respiratory illness. She was buried in the convent's Chapel of St. Joseph.

On September 22, 1909 — thirty years after her death — her body was exhumed for the formal canonization cause. Bishop Gauthey of Nevers presided in the presence of physicians, notaries, and members of the religious community. The body showed no significant decomposition: the skin was desiccated but intact, the limbs had not collapsed, and the face remained recognizable. The crucifix in her hands and her rosary had oxidized, but the body itself showed none of the advanced putrefaction expected after three decades in the ground. It was washed, reclothed, and reinterred in a new double casket.

A second exhumation on April 3, 1919, showed further change: patches of mold, a coating of mineral salts, and partial skin loss in certain areas. The examining physician, Dr. Comte, described the tissue as practically mummified. Despite these developments, the Church's commission determined the body still met the traditional definition of incorruptibility — free from putrefaction, form intact.

The third exhumation took place on April 18, 1925, forty-six years after death, in preparation for Bernadette's beatification. Doctors Comte and Talon found the remaining soft tissue possessed a soft and almost normal consistency. Relics were collected: fragments of two ribs, both kneecaps, a muscle sample, hair, and skin. Because the face and hands had darkened and contracted, the Church commissioned Parisian sculptor Pierre Imans to create a wax facial mask and wax hands, restoring the body's dignity for public veneration.

Since 1925, Saint Bernadette's body has rested in a crystal reliquary in the main chapel of the Convent of Saint-Gildard in Nevers, where it is visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year.