Saint Catherine Laboure

As the evening Angelus bell sounded, Catherine was born of Peter and Louise Laboure on May 2, 1806, the ninth child of a family of eleven. Fifteen minutes after Catherine’s birth, her name was entered on the city records. She was baptized on the following day on the feast of the Finding of the True Cross. It surely was God’s design that Catherine, a saint who was to be so highly favored by the Blessed Virgin, was born at the ringing of the bell for Our Lady's Angelus.

When Catherine was nine years old, her saintly mother died. After the burial service, little Catherine retired to her room and, standing on a chair, took our Lady's statue from the shelf, kissed it, and said: “Now, dear Lady, you are to be my mother.”

When Catherine was very young, she had a vision of St. Vincent de Paul and was thus persuaded to enter a convent. She entered the Daughters of Charity and was a very holy and cheerful nun; all of the sick people loved her company. Sister Catherine was very privileged, having received many apparitions from St. Vincent de Paul and, more importantly, from the Blessed Virgin Mary. One day the Blessed Mother chose to reveal to her a secret—Catherine Laboure’s heavenly mission was to create and propagate the Miraculous Medal. When the Mother of God gave Sr. Catherine the instructions for the medal, she said: “Have a medal struck as I have shown you. All who wear it will receive great graces.”

Soon people were wearing the medals and miracles began to take place; thus the medal came to be known as the “Miraculous Medal.” Many wicked men and women were converted through the graces provided by the Mother of God. In no time at all, Miraculous Medals were propagated everywhere.

Catherine died on the 31st of December in 1876; and when her body was exhumed in 1933, it was found as fresh as it was on the day it was buried. Although she had been in the grave for fifty-seven years, her eyes remained very blue and beautiful; and in death her arms and legs were as supple as if she were asleep. Her incorrupt body is encased in glass beneath the side altar at the chapel of the Daughters of Charity at 140 Rue de Bac in Paris, France, beneath one of the sites where our Lady appeared to her.