Catherine Labouré

Born Zoé Labouré on May 2, 1806, in Fain-lès-Moutiers, Burgundy, Catherine Labouré was a French nun. She entered the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul in 1830. The same year, while a novice at the convent on Rue du Bac in Paris, she was favored with apparitions of the Virgin Mary. During these apparitions, the Virgin reportedly asked her to have a medal struck, which would later become known as the Miraculous Medal, promising great graces to those who wore it with confidence. Catherine Labouré spent the last 46 years of her life in exemplary silence and humility, serving the poor and the sick at a hospice in Enghien (now Reuilly), Paris, without ever revealing her role in the dissemination of the medal, except to her confessor and superior. She died on December 31, 1876, and was canonized by Pope Pius XII in 1947.