Saint of the Day, April 28

Saint Catherine Labouré (1806–1876), a Daughter of Charity, received in the chapel of the rue du Bac in Paris the apparitions that gave the Church the Miraculous Medal. In the night of 18 July 1830 the Virgin appeared and spoke with her for two hours; in November the great vision came — Mary standing on a globe, her hands streaming rays of grace, with the inscription 'O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.' Catherine asked that a medal be struck according to the model shown, and the medal — distributed in tens of millions — preceded the definition of the Immaculate Conception by twenty-four years. She kept her identity as the visionary secret for forty-six years until just before her death.