The city of Lourdes in the Hautes-Pyrénées department attracts millions of visitors and pilgrims every year who come to gather at the site of the multiple apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Aged 14 in 1858, the young Bernadette Soubirous, daughter of a penniless miller, found herself experiencing 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary between February 11 and July 16 in the Massabielle cave located along the Gave river. Subsequently, in January 1862, the Catholic Church recognized seven miraculous healings thanks to Notre-Dame de Lourdes. The Church also then recognized the apparitions of the white lady to Bernadette Soubirous.