In 1909, the Catholic Church opened the tomb of a French nun who had been dead for thirty years. They expected bones. They found her face. They reburied her. Ten years later they opened the tomb again. Then again in 1925. Each time the face was still there. She is on display today in a small chapel in central France. You can go and see her.

Her name was Bernadette Soubirous. Born on the seventh of January, 1844, to a starving miller's family in Lourdes, in the French Pyrenees. At fourteen, she reported eighteen apparitions of a young woman in a cave at Massabielle. The local clergy was sceptical. Bernadette never wavered. She entered the Sisters of Charity of Nevers in 1866 and refused to discuss the apparitions further. She suffered from tuberculosis of the lungs and bones for the last decade of her life. She died on the sixteenth of April, 1879, Easter Wednesday, aged thirty-five.

Thirty years later, on the twenty-second of September 1909, the Catholic Church opened her tomb as part of the inquiry into her canonisation. Two doctors and three nuns were present. The wooden coffin had decomposed. The crucifix and rosary in her hands had rusted. The body itself was intact. The face was peaceful. The hands were folded. The body was washed and reburied. Ten years later, on the third of April 1919, the Church exhumed her again. The body was still intact. The face and hands had darkened slightly from the 1909 washing. Six years later, in 1925, the Church exhumed her a third time, forty-six years after her death. The body was still intact. The face was still peaceful.

The Catholic Church called it a miracle and beatified her that year. Modern pathology has not offered an explanation. A thin wax mask was placed over her face and hands in 1925 to cover the discolouration for public display. Underneath, the body is still her own. She is in a gilded glass case in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at Saint-Gildard in Nevers, France. The chapel opens to the public every day. You can go and see her.

Witnessed. Subscribe.