“THE Village of St. Bernadette,” sung by Andy Williams, was a hit single in 1959, reaching Number 7 on the charts at Billboard magazine for 13 weeks. The song is about Bernadette Soubirous, the remarkable girl from the French village of Lourdes, and her visions of the Blessed Mother, which occurred on 18 occasions in 1858 and were followed by a miraculous spring that cured the sick. This touching song is not a great work of art, to be sure, but it expresses the inspiration that ordinary, often quite poor people have felt in response to Bernadette ever since that day when she fell to her knees in a lonely grotto, transfixed by the appearance of the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, and it is a striking illustration of how far popular culture has come. It’s hard — no, impossible — to imagine a song like this as a hit today.

Bernadette Soubirous

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