Dear Members of AMIL and Dear Readers,
Here in your hands is the Spring issue of our Bulletin, which was born in 1928 and is now entering its 94th year of publication.
(1) Docteur Raoul Comte
Rapport sur les exhumations de la Bienheureuse Bernadette
Bulletin de l ‘Association Médicale de Notre-Dame de Lourdes N° 2 – Mai 1928 (pages 33-46)
After two issues about Covid, I decided to dedicate this issue to Saint Bernadette Soubirous. I can do this thanks to the generous collaboration of my beloved predecessor, Doctor Roger Pilon, in charge from 1990 to 1996, direct successor of Doctor Théodore Mangiapan. I got to know Roger Pilon when he arrived in Lourdes, where I met him every year during my pilgrimage and during my ‘stage’ with the Hospitality of Our Lady of Lourdes. We immediately formed a close and beautiful friendship, and he gave me the honor of coming as a guest to Naples and Caserta for a series of conferences in March 1994.
In 1996, he published a most interesting little book entitled, Le corps de Bernadette Soubirous – dans sa vie, dans sa mort, dans sa béatification (The body of Bernadette Soubirous – in her life, in her death, in her beatification), published by Éditions NDL. The interest of this work lies in the meticulous description of the state of health of the seer of Lourdes from the point of view of the doctor, and in the details of the canonical recognitions of the remains of Bernadette with the observation of the incorruptibility of her body. And, as in a true “thriller”, Doctor Pilon – a pathologist – even advances an intriguing hypothesis on the process of mummification of this body which is so revered. After the third revised and updated edition in 2014, this little book has been unavailable for several years. Roger Pilon accepted with great enthusiasm the idea of the full text being published in this Bulletin.
The Relics of Saint Bernadette have always been the subject of great interest. You will then read the article “Relics and Reliquaries of Saint Bernadette” – published in St Joseph News Letter n ° 4, January 2020 – by our friend, Bernard Gladin, Vice President and person in charge of the St Joseph Service of the HNDL.