Bernadette Soubirous (January 7, 1844–April 16, 1879) was a visionary and nun from the town of Lourdes in southern France. Her visions made the town a major site for pilgrimages. She was canonized as a saint by the Roman Catholic Church.

Bernadette was the daughter of François Soubirous, a miller, and the oldest of six children; they lived in hard poverty. It is recorded that Bernadette first took communion at the age of 14. On 11 February 1858, when she was 14, Bernadette saw the first of eighteen visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary at a rock called Massabielle in Lourdes while she was out gathering firewood. Mary told Bernadette to drink from the spring that flowed under the rock. The other content of Bernadette's visions was simple, and focused on the need for prayer and penance. Her last vision was on March 25, 1858.

During these visions it is reported that the apparition identified herself as the "Immaculate Conception", which confirmed the views of Pope Pius IX, who had raised this to a dogma four years prior to this event.

Bernadette was a sickly child; she suffered most of her life from tuberculosis, and some of the people who interviewed her following her revelation of the visions thought her simple-minded. But despite being rigorously interviewed by officials of both the Roman Catholic Church and the French government, she stuck consistently by her story.

Still, disliking the attention she was attracting, she became a nun in the Sisters of Notre Dame de Nevers at the age of 22. She lived in the convent and spent the rest of her brief life fighting with tuberculosis of the bone in the right knee. She eventually died of her illness at the age of thirty-five on April 15 1879. She took no notice of the development of Lourdes as a pilgrimage shrine, and was not present for the consecration of the basilica there in 1876.

The body was first exhumed on September 2, 1909, in the presence of representatives appointed by the postulators of the cause, 2 doctors, and the sister of the community. Her body was exhumed and found to be "incorrupt" — preserved from decomposition, perhaps by supernatural means. However, the cruxifix in her hand and the rosary had both oxidized. This was one of the miracles cited for support of her canonization. Her body was washed and reclothed before burial in a new double casket.

The corpse was exhumed a second time on April 3, 1919. The body was found to be still preserved. There was slight discoloration of the face which has been explained as being due to the washing process of the first exhumation. A wax mask was applied to the face and the remains were then place in a gold and glass reliquary in the Chapel of Saint Bernadette at the motherhouse in Nevers.

She was canonized in 1933, not so much for the content of her visions, but rather for her simplicity and holiness of life.

Her life was given a fictional treatment in Franz Werfel's novel The Song of Bernadette, which later was made into a motion picture.