The Challenge of Bernadette

The story of St. Bernadette is well-known: on 11th February 1858, Our Lady appeared to a girl of fourteen near Lourdes, then a little French township at the foot of the Pyrenees. Seventeen further apparitions followed and as Bernadette faithfully reported Our Lady’s requests for prayer and penance, news of these events spread like wildfire. By the time of the final apparition, the crowd attending was estimated at twenty thousand persons. Since then, Lourdes has become one of the most famous sites of pilgrimage in the world, with an estimated five million visitors each year and over sixty miraculous cures recognised by the Church.

The Challenge of Bernadette is a classic and highly readable book which explores her life, the time and place in which she lived, and most importantly, helps us to understand her Challenge, to those amongst she lived and to us today.

“[The author] is particularly admirable when dealing with Bernadette herself, for whom his love and reverence are beautifully conveyed … A well-written and stimulating little book, which fulfils it purpose by bringing home to the reader in telling fashion the challenge of Bernadette.” —The Tablet

“Many have been the books about Bernadette and about Lourdes, yet few have managed to give the ‘feel’ of the place so well as this … The whole thing is alive and compelling. The Challenge is clear cut and concise and the locality in which it was made is shown it its perfectly chosen background, geographical, historical, and religious.” —Catholic Gazette

Hugh Ross Williamson, author

114 pages

ISBN 978 0 85244 649 2