The story of the Miraculous Medal
Millions wear the Miraculous Medal. Very few know why.
No jeweller designed it. Our Lady showed a nun in Paris exactly what to make.
The front
The back
Paris, 1830
Our Lady appeared to a young nun named Catherine Labouré.
Catherine was twenty-four, a farmer's daughter, only a few months into her convent in Paris.
Catherine was woken in the night and led down to the chapel. Every candle was already lit. Our Lady was sitting there, waiting for her.
Our Lady showed Catherine a medal, and asked for it to be made.
Our Lady stood on a globe with light streaming from her hands, and gold words formed in a ring around her.
Then the picture turned over, the way a coin turns. A cross. The letter M. Two hearts. Twelve stars.
"Have a medal made after this pattern."
Catherine told her priest. He didn't believe her.
He decided a young nun had imagined it, and sent Catherine back to work.
So Catherine went back to peeling vegetables and looking after the old men in the infirmary. She never brought it up again.
It took the priest two years to change his mind.
1832
The first medals were made — and cholera hit Paris.
The nuns took them into the worst streets in the city and gave them to anyone who would take one.
People came back for more. Not for themselves — for a mother, a husband, a child.
Ordinary people started calling it the Miraculous Medal. The name stuck.
Wear the same design Our Lady showed Catherine in 1830.
Get the Miraculous Medal
Rome, 1842
A rich young banker wore one as a joke.
Alphonse Ratisbonne had no interest in the Church at all. A friend bet him he wouldn't wear the medal and say one prayer. He took the bet.
Days later Alphonse walked into a church in Rome and walked out believing. He became a priest.
And Catherine never said a word.
Millions were wearing the medal by then. Catherine stayed in the same house for another forty-six years, doing the same quiet work — and almost nobody there knew she was the one who had seen Our Lady.
Catherine only admitted it in the last year of her life.
Paris, today
Catherine is still in that chapel.
Catherine died in 1876. Her body was exhumed in 1933 and found intact, and it lies today beneath the altar of the same chapel she was led to that night. People come from all over the world to kneel there.
Two hundred years on, not one line has changed.
Wear the medal Our Lady asked forStruck to the 1830 design · Blessed before it ships · 30-day refund