The Rue du Bac Apparitions: Catherine Labouré and the Miraculous Medal

Spring 1830. Zoé Labouré, the 9th of 11 children from Fain-lès-Moutiers, entered the novitiate of the Daughters of Charity at 140 Rue du Bac in Paris. She was 24. On the eve of the feast of St Vincent de Paul, she went to bed with a single hope. "I went to bed with the thought that this night I would see my Good Mother. I had been wanting to see her for so long!"

Around 11:30 she heard her name. A child of four or five, dressed in white, told her to come to the chapel. He went ahead, "bringing rays of brightness wherever he passed," into a brilliantly illuminated chapel. At about midnight came a sound "like the rustle of a silk dress." Then: "A very beautiful lady sat in the director's chair."

Catherine sprang forward "with one leap to her side," kneeling on the altar steps, her hands on the knees of the Blessed Virgin. The Lady spoke of graces, and of trouble. "Times are very bad. Calamities are going to fall upon France." Catherine heard the clock strike 2:00 am. Then the Lady was suddenly gone.

27 November 1830. Evening meditation. Again, the rustling of a silk dress. Catherine saw the Virgin standing level with the picture of St Joseph, in a dress of dawn-white silk. She stood on a half-globe, a serpent under her feet, and held a golden globe. Rings set with gems appeared on her fingers and poured out rays. "These rays are a symbol of the graces that I pour out on those who ask them of me."

An oval frame formed around her, with golden letters: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." Then the picture turned. On the reverse, a large M surmounted by a bar and a cross, two hearts and twelve stars. "Have a medal struck after this model." In December she came one last time. "You will not see me anymore."

Her confessor, Fr Jean-Marie Aladel, did not believe her at first. Later he took the design to Archbishop Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen, who allowed it to be struck. The goldsmith Adrien Vachette made the first medals on 30 June 1832. By 1876 there were over 1 billion.

In 1836 de Quélen ordered a canonical inquiry, run by Canon Quentin, Vicar General. Catherine never testified. Aladel reported that she had "forgotten everything concerning the event." The tribunal pointed instead to "the extraordinary speed with which this medal has spread" as a sign from Heaven.

No source says the novices around her saw or heard a thing, and no police, scientists or press examined the case. No one has alleged a hoax. But the Vincentian historian Pierre Coste privately doubted the visions and tried to stop her beatification. As Stafford Poole summarised in 1999, Coste noted that "She made no reference to prophecies accompanying the visions until after the supposedly predicted events had occurred." The July Revolution broke out in Paris about a week after the first apparition. Even the medal departed from her vision, trading the Virgin holding a globe for the familiar pose with arms lowered.

Catherine Labouré spent about 40 years caring for the elderly at the Hospice d'Enghien in Reuilly. She died on 31 December 1876. She was canonised on 27 July 1947. Her body, found incorrupt when exhumed in 1933, lies under glass in the chapel. About 2 million visitors come each year to see where the Miraculous Medal began.