Lourdes became, from the years following the apparitions, closely associated with claims of physical healing connected to the spring water at the grotto, and the Catholic Church established a dedicated Bureau of Medical Verifications to investigate such claims using contemporary medical standards, a formal process that has continued, with evolving scientific rigor, since the late nineteenth century. Out of many thousands of reported cures over more than a century and a half, the Church has formally recognized only a small number, currently numbering under a hundred, as inexplicable according to current medical knowledge, a deliberately cautious formal category distinct from, and considerably narrower than, an outright declaration of supernatural miracle.
The site's continued draw, receiving several million visitors annually from across the Catholic world and beyond, reflects both its devotional significance as a Marian shrine and the ongoing, carefully documented tradition of healing claims associated specifically with this location, a combination that has made Lourdes one of the most studied sites of claimed religious healing anywhere in the world.
Bernadette Soubirous herself later entered religious life as a nun and died in 1879; she was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1933, and her preserved body remains on display at the motherhouse of her religious order in Nevers, France, a further point of pilgrimage connected to the wider Lourdes devotion.