Saint Catherine Labouré

Catherine Labouré, baptized Zoé, was born on May 2, 1806, at Fain-lès-Moutiers in Burgundy, the eighth of ten children of a farming family. Her mother died in 1815, and from the age of twelve she was her father’s chief helper on the farm. She made her First Communion on January 25, 1818, in the church of Moutiers-Saint-Jean. As a young woman she dreamed of a priest who called her to follow him, and years later she recognized him in a portrait of Saint Vincent de Paul at the house of the Daughters of Charity at Châtillon-sur-Seine. Her father opposed her vocation for years and sent her to Paris to work in her brother’s restaurant; he finally let her go, and in January 1830, at twenty-three, she began her postulancy at Châtillon-sur-Seine.

On April 21, 1830, she entered the seminary of the Daughters of Charity at their mother house on the rue du Bac in Paris. In her first weeks there she had visions of the heart of Saint Vincent and of Christ in the Eucharist. During the night of July 18, 1830, according to her account, the Virgin appeared to her in the chapel and spoke with her; the armchair linked to that apparition is still shown there. On November 27, 1830, she saw the image that the medal reproduces, framed by the prayer “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee,” and was asked to have a medal struck after it.

She told only her confessor, who after two years of inquiry brought the matter to the archbishop of Paris without naming her. Archbishop de Quélen authorized the medal in 1832, and it was given out at once to the sick in the hospitals of Paris during the cholera epidemic. Cures and conversions attributed to it, above all the conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne in 1842, earned it the name of Miraculous Medal.

On February 5, 1831, she was sent to the hospice of Enghien, a home for the elderly poor at Reuilly, then on the edge of Paris, and she served there for forty-six years, in the kitchen, the linen room, the farmyard and the porter’s lodge. During the Commune of 1871 she stood by her superior, Sister Dufès, when a mob tried to take her away, and gave miraculous medals to the communards. Only her confessors knew that she was the sister of the apparitions until the spring of 1876, when she wrote an account for her superior, Sister Dufès. She died at Enghien on December 31, 1876, and was buried in the crypt of the chapel of the neighboring house of Reuilly.

Further reading: Marian Apparitions of France: A Pilgrim’s Guide.

When her coffin was opened in 1933 her body was found well preserved. Pope Pius XI beatified her that year, and her body was moved to the chapel of the rue du Bac, where it rests in a glass reliquary beneath the statue of Our Lady of the Globe. Pope Pius XII canonized her on July 27, 1947. Her feast on November 28 is kept by the Vincentian family and as an optional memorial in the archdiocese of Paris; the Roman Martyrology lists her on December 31. The chapel at 140 rue du Bac is open every day, free of charge, and receives several million pilgrims and visitors a year from every continent.

She is shown in the habit of the Daughters of Charity, with the Virgin who appeared to her. In the chapel of the rue du Bac, which is kept plain, the statue of Our Lady of the Globe stands above the altar where she rests, and the armchair of July 1830 can still be seen. The medal itself, designed after her description and made through the goldsmith Adrien Vachette, bears around the Virgin the French words “Ô Marie conçue sans péché, priez pour nous qui avons recours à vous.”

• Paris, Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous MedalAt 140 rue du Bac, the chapel of the apparitions, where her body rests beneath the statue of Our Lady of the Globe; open daily, free.
• Paris, ReuillyThe district where she served the elderly at the hospice of Enghien for forty-six years and lived at the house of the Daughters of Charity at 77 rue de Reuilly, where she was first buried.
• Fain-lès-MoutiersHer native village in Burgundy, where she grew up on her father’s farm.

• Via ImmaculataeThe Way of the Immaculate, ten daysDay I, Paris
• Via GratiaeThe Great Shrines of France, thirteen daysDay II, Paris