They've Got What it Takes: Sainted Nuns
THE BODY OF SAINT BERNADETTE OF LOURDES
This is a photograph of the "incorrupt" body of St. Bernadette of Lourdes. Church sources maintain that her body was never embalmed or treated in any way. Thin wax masks were laid over her face and hands in 1925 to hide the cadaver's sunken eyes and nose and the blackish hue of face and hands. During the first exhumation, her face appeared to be "a dull white," her hands were "perfectly preserved," and her nose was "dilated and shrunken". Bernadette died on April 16, 1879.
The body of Bernadette underwent three "identifications of the body", i.e., exhumations and examinations before her candidacy for sainthood. The doctors conducting the first examination in 1909 gave detailed and somewhat gruesome descriptions of this process of "identification":
"The coffin was opened in the presence of the Bishop of Nevers, the mayor of the town, his principal deputy, several canons and ourselves. We noticed no smell. The body was clothed in the habit of Bernadette's order. The habit was damp. Only the face, hands and forearms were uncovered.
The head was tilted to the left. The face was dull white. The skin clung to the muscles and the muscles adhered to the bones. The sockets of the eyes were covered by the eye-lids. The brows were flat on the skin and stuck to the arches above the eyes. The lashes of the right eyelid were stuck to the skin. The nose was dilated and shrunken. The mouth was open slightly and it could be seen that the teeth were still in place. The hands, which were crossed on her breast, were perfectly preserved, as were the nails. The hands still held a rusting rosary. The veins on the forearms stood out.
Like the hands, the feet were wizened and the toenails were still intact (one of them was torn off when the corpse was washed). When the habits had been removed and the veil lifted from the head, the whole of the shrivelled body could be seen, rigid and taut in every limb.
It was found that the hair, which had been cut short, was stuck to the head and still attached to the skull -- that the ears were in a state of perfect preservation -- that the left side of the body was slightly higher than the right from the hip up.
The stomach had caved in and was taut like the rest of the body. It sounded like cardboard when struck.
The left knee was not as large as the right. The ribs protruded as did the muscles in the limbs.
So rigid was the body that it could be rolled over and back for washing.
The lower parts of the body had turned slightly black. This seems to have been the result of the carbon of which quite large quantities were found in the coffin."
