"With my mask, you recognize me anyway," she whispers, a smile in her eyes. On the esplanade, at the Sainte-Bernadette church or in the Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire basilica, Sister Bernadette Moriau, 81 years old in September, cannot take a hundred paces without being kindly challenged and immortalized by the pilgrims. And for good reason: the nun of Oise is the 70th miraculous of Lourdes, the last to date, thus solemnly recognized by the Church in 2018 after a decade of investigations by the Office of Medical Findings of the Marian City.
It was here that in July 2008 she made a pilgrimage in a wheelchair. She was then almost paralyzed, suffering for half a century from a serious pathology attacking her lumbar roots. Back at the convent, the Franciscan hears an interior voice asking her to get rid of her corset and her leg brace. It is the end of the ordeal. Incredible but true: she starts walking again normally. The healing is unexplained. Today, she no longer walks, she runs, making a series of trips through France to tell a sacred story.
"Lourdes without the sick, it is no longer Lourdes"
"I'm rejuvenating, it's true", she breathes, two hours before reciting, in front of the cave, "a prayer on behalf of the sick who cannot come" in the Marian city this year because of the pandemic of Covid-19. “I am sorry for them, I can imagine how they must feel. Lourdes without the sick, it is no longer Lourdes. There are social networks, but nothing replaces the human encounter, ”hammers the octogenarian in sandals, seen this August 13 in Lourdes, two days before the feast of the Assumption.
However, she "felt the same fervor at Mass" as in the past. “We are a crowd in the invisible communion”, she describes. During the 2018 Assumption, she came to testify for the first time in front of the sick with her new status of “miraculous”. She always takes great pleasure in coming back.
“It’s always a very strong moment to be there. Lourdes is engraved in me for eternity. This is my second land, but my blessed land ”, she lights up. His book “My life is a miracle” (Editions JC Lattès), published in France almost two years ago, continues to be a hit abroad. "It has been translated in Korea, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Poland ..." identifies the one who hates being presented as a star. She kept her strong character. "I'm moaning, but I'm not complaining," she laughs.