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| Portrait of Sister Catherine at the time of the apparitions. |
Saint Catherine Laboure lived between 1806 till 1876 and was born in Burgundy, France. She was the ninth child of a large family of seventeen children, their parents were pious and prosperous farmers. However, her mother died when she was only nine years old. After the funeral, Catherine kissed a statue of Our Lady in her home, and said: “Now You will be my mother.” After caring for her family at the age of 22, she entered the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in Paris. On the eve of the feast of Saint Vincent de Paul in 1830, she experienced her first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary entrusted the mission of spreading devotion to the Miraculous Medal to Catherine and revealed in a vision how it should look like. She appeared to Saint Catherine another two times and the Miraculous Medal was eventually mass-produced and was approved by the Church. Saint Catherine preferred to be anonymous and she was unknown as the visionary even to the sisters in her own convent. She took care of the sick and led a quiet life. After her death, many miracles were ascribed to her relics. Saint Catherine Laboure’s body remains incorrupt and her body is in a glass casket in the chapel where she served and had the visions of Our Lady.
