For while the phrase “I am the Immaculate Conception” is an answer to Bernadette’s question, it is also, by its formulation, a way of speaking to those in a position of authority who had doubted the girl, and who, to test her, had insisted that she ‘find out’ the lady’s name, and report it to them, before they would even begin to consider her requests, which were not, after all, anything immoderate, or out of keeping with the Church’s mission in the world, but were, in the evangelical and penitential sense, what one might expect to hear, in general if not specifically.