Our Lady of Grace — the Miraculous Medal — Chronology

Chronology of the reported Rue du Bac apparitions, the Miraculous Medal and the Paris they happened in (1806–2017)

An open, source-referenced chronology of the reported 1830 apparitions to Catherine Labouré at the Rue du Bac chapel in Paris: the July Revolution and the cholera epidemic around them, the Miraculous Medal and its diffusion, the graces reported for it, the seer’s lifelong anonymity, and the Church judgments on all of it.

Last updated: 2026-08-06

How far the case went

The Miraculous Medal is an approved devotion, and that is not the same as an approved apparition. Archbishop de Quélen authorised the medal in 1832; Leo XIII instituted its feast with a proper Office and Mass in 1894 and granted a canonical coronation in 1897; the seer was beatified in 1933 and canonized in 1947; the medal has been struck by the hundreds of millions with the Church's blessing for nearly two centuries. Anyone who says the medal is approved is right. What no authority has been found to have issued is a judgment on whether the apparitions Catherine Labouré reported in 1830 were supernatural. The diocesan inquiry of 1836 heard the case at one remove — she refused to appear and stayed anonymous until her death — and the accounts disagree on whether it concluded anything at all; the French Wikipedia synthesis says the apparitions have never been recognised as authentic at the end of a canonical process and calls the Church's recognition "implicit", which concedes in the same breath that no explicit one exists. This ladder therefore looks emptier than the devotion's standing would suggest, and the gap between the two is the finding, not an oversight: each rung records one authority, what it did, when, and about WHICH object, and the page adds them up into nothing.

  1. Local stage — no parish inquiry; the account ran through the confessor1830–1832 The case did not reach this step
  2. Diocesan inquiry of the archdiocese of Paris1836 — opened 16 February (date unverified), some nineteen sittings to July; lapsed 1839 Investigated — no verdict issued
  3. Rome — a ruling on the apparitions themselves No record found that this step took place
  4. Rome — the Ratisbonne conversion (Rome, 1842): a judgment on a different reported event3 June 1842 Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition
  5. Rome — the feast and the coronation: concessions to the devotion23 July 1894; coronation granted 1897 Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition
  6. Rome — the cause of Catherine Labouré: a judgment about a person, not about the apparitionsbeatified 28 May 1933; canonized 27 July 1947 Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition
One rung per authority. "No ruling found" is a statement about the evidence, not about the case.
Step by step, with the documents

Local stage — no parish inquiry; the account ran through the confessor 1830–1832

The case did not reach this step

Jean-Marie Aladel CM, Catherine Labouré's confessor and spiritual director

There was no local or parish investigation to reach. Catherine Labouré reported the apparitions to Aladel in spiritual direction and insisted on remaining anonymous as the seer; Aladel, who at first doubted her, was the sole channel by which the account reached authority, and after about two years he took it not to a local inquiry but directly to the archbishop of Paris, obtaining his authorization to strike the medal in 1832. Every later stage therefore examined the account at one remove, through the confessor, and never the seer herself.

Searched the sources used here — the chapel's own histories of Catherine Labouré and of the medal, the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article, Polistena's 2012 scholarly study and the French Wikipedia synthesis — for any parish-level or locally appointed investigation before 1836. None records one, and each describes the same route: confessor to archbishop. What the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia calls a 'careful investigation' is Aladel's own private testing of the account ('After careful investigation, M. Aladel, the spiritual director of Sister Catherine, obtained the approval of Mgr. de Quelen'), not a canonical proceeding. Recorded as a step the case did not take, on that positive account of the route, rather than as a gap in the record; no source consulted states in so many words that no local inquiry was held.

[6] [5] [8] [9] [12]

Diocesan inquiry of the archdiocese of Paris 1836 — opened 16 February (date unverified), some nineteen sittings to July; lapsed 1839

Investigated — no verdict issued

Archbishop Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen, through Vicar-General Quentin as promoter

What this inquiry examined was the medal, its diffusion and the credibility of an account it could not hear at first hand — not the supernatural character of the apparitions, and it never publicly identified the seer. Per the detailed account used here it admitted five classes of proof: Catherine Labouré's trustworthiness (attested through Fr Aladel, since she refused to appear before the promoter and stayed anonymous), her director's prudence, the theological soundness of the reported vision, the medal's extraordinary circulation, and documented cures and conversions. The findings were favourable, but no judgment followed — 'the ecclesiastical authority did not pronounce judgment; we know not why the inquiry did not receive the sanction to which it apparently led' — and the proceedings were abandoned at de Quélen's death in 1839. The Association of the Miraculous Medal, a Vincentian devotional body, characterises the outcome far more strongly: 'a canonical inquiry undertaken in Paris declared that the medal was of supernatural origin, and that the wonders worked through it were genuine'. That is the association's wording, from a source labelled here as sympathetic, and no decree is produced for it; this rung records what the inquiry examined and that it issued no verdict, and leaves the stronger reading attributed to the body that makes it. Two accounts of how that inquiry ended are in circulation and they do not agree. The detailed nineteenth-century narrative used here says no judgment followed at all. The English Wikipedia article says the opposite — that the court "extolled her character and virtue", "placed wholehearted credence in her visions", and reached "two important conclusions: that the Medal was of supernatural origin, and that the wonders worked through it were genuine". Note what even the stronger version does and does not say: its object is the MEDAL and the wonders worked through it, not the apparitions, and the same article nowhere states that the apparitions were approved. The disagreement is over whether conclusions were issued at all; it is recorded and not resolved, and settling it needs the proceedings themselves, which the sources say were lost or never published and which the diocesan archives of Paris would hold if anything does.

[10] [11] [12] [23]

Rome — a ruling on the apparitions themselves

No record found that this step took place

No Roman act ruling on the supernatural character of the 1830 rue du Bac apparitions was located. Searched: the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Miraculous Medal, which records the 1832 archiepiscopal authorization and the 1894 feast and no such decree; the chapel's own history pages; the Miracle Hunter catalogue of Marian apparition claims and their canonical statuses; and the French Wikipedia synthesis, which states positively that the apparitions 'n'ont jamais été reconnues authentiques par l'Église catholique au terme d'un procès canonique' and calls the Church's recognition 'implicite'. Recorded as not located rather than as settled: the search covered published secondary and reference literature only, and the diocesan archives of Paris and the Vincentian archives have not been consulted.

[12] [8]

Rome — the Ratisbonne conversion (Rome, 1842): a judgment on a different reported event 3 June 1842

Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition

Tribunal of the Cardinal Vicar; Cardinal Costantino Patrizi, Vicar-General of Gregory XVI

The one completed canonical trial in this dossier judged something else, in another city, twelve years later. Alphonse Ratisbonne reported a vision of the Virgin 'as on the medal' at Sant'Andrea delle Fratte in Rome on 20 January 1842 while wearing a Miraculous Medal; after a canonical process, Patrizi's decree of 3 June 1842 declared his instantaneous conversion a true and outstanding miracle wrought by God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. It is a judgment on that Roman event of 1842 and on nothing else. It says nothing about what Catherine Labouré reported seeing in Paris in 1830, and devotional literature that cites it as Rome's approval of the rue du Bac account is moving a verdict from one object to another.

[14]

Rome — the feast and the coronation: concessions to the devotion 23 July 1894; coronation granted 1897

Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition

Leo XIII, after examination of the facts by the Sacred Congregation of Rites

Leo XIII instituted a feast, with a special Office and Mass, of the Manifestation of the Immaculate Virgin under the title of the Miraculous Medal, to be celebrated yearly on 27 November. A feast is a liturgical concession: it authorises public worship under a title and settles that the cult may be celebrated. It is not a finding of fact about the 1830 apparitions, and the act carries no declaration about them. The French Wikipedia synthesis groups it with the seer's canonization as 'implicit' recognition — a description that concedes, in the same breath, that no explicit one exists. Three years later Leo XIII granted a canonical coronation of the statue "of the Immaculate Conception, known as the Miraculous Medal" — the highest honour the Holy See pays an image, and still an honour paid to an image. Between the two acts, the Holy See had authorised public worship under the title and crowned the figure, without at any point saying what happened in the chapel in 1830.

[8] [12] [23]

Rome — the cause of Catherine Labouré: a judgment about a person, not about the apparitions beatified 28 May 1933; canonized 27 July 1947

Church act on a related matter — not a ruling on the apparition

Pius XI (beatification); Pius XII (canonization)

A cause of canonization judges a candidate's holiness of life and the miracles attributed to her intercession after death. Pius XI beatified Catherine Labouré on 28 May 1933 and Pius XII canonized her on 27 July 1947. Addressing the pilgrims the next day, Pius XII recalled the missions she attributed to the Virgin and spoke of the medal 'that the voice of the people did not hesitate to call miraculous' — attributing the name to the people, not to the Church. Declaring the seer a saint establishes that she is held to be one; it is not a ruling that what she reported seeing took place, and the two questions were never joined in a single proceeding.

[13] [7]

About

Work-in-progress dataset compiled from public sources (see references). The apparitions are recorded as REPORTED events: the dataset states who reported what and when, and what Church authorities ruled and when — it never asserts the supernatural claim as fact. Events around 1830 that are not part of the account — the July Revolution, the sacking of the archbishopric, the 1832 cholera epidemic, the state of the Vincentian houses — are CONTEXT for the Paris this happened in, and are offered neither as explanation nor as corroboration. Reported graces are handled the same way: the datable thing is the ACCOUNT, that a cure or conversion was reported and printed, by whom and when — Aladel's pamphlet of 1834 above all — or the RECOGNITION ACT, of which there is one here, Cardinal Patrizi's decree of 3 June 1842 on a different event in Rome. No cure is recorded as having happened; the reported incorruption of the body in 1933 is recorded as what witnesses reported, not as a finding. 'Miraculous' is the name Parisians gave the medal, recorded as a popular attribution and never adopted as this dataset's own. Diffusion and attendance figures are attributed to whoever publishes them and left unreconciled where they disagree. Contested claims are attributed to their authors; dates not yet verified against a primary source are flagged with a ? mark. Corrections against primary sources are welcome.

What it is
A series of Marian apparitions reported by Catherine Labouré, then a novice of the Daughters of Charity, at the chapel of the motherhouse at 140 rue du Bac, Paris, between July and December 1830 — and the devotional medal (popularly the 'Miraculous Medal') struck in 1832 on the basis of her account. In Portuguese and Spanish the image on the medal is widely venerated as Nossa Senhora das Graças / Nuestra Señora de las Gracias (Our Lady of Grace).[1] [8]
Attestation chain
The account of the apparitions rests on Catherine Labouré's testimony as relayed by her confessor Jean-Marie Aladel CM, and on her own later written accounts. She remained publicly anonymous as the seer during her lifetime and refused to appear before the 1836 diocesan inquiry; her identity became generally known only around her death in 1876.[12] [6] [10]
Church approval status
Approval attached primarily to the medal and its cult, not to a formal declaratory sentence on the apparitions: Archbishop de Quélen of Paris authorized the medal (struck June 1832); his 1836 diocesan inquiry gathered favorable evidence; Leo XIII instituted a liturgical feast (27 November) in 1894; Pius XII canonized Catherine Labouré in 1947. The French Wikipedia synthesis notes the apparitions were never declared authentic at the close of a completed canonical trial, while devotional accounts state the 1836 inquiry pronounced the medal of supernatural origin — this dataset records both readings (see the 1836 event).[12] [10] [11] [8]
Place
Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, motherhouse of the Daughters of Charity, 140 rue du Bac, 7th arrondissement, Paris.[1]
Feast
27 November — feast of the Manifestation of the Immaculate Virgin under the title of the Miraculous Medal, instituted by Leo XIII on 23 July 1894.[8]
Reported graces
Cures and conversions were claimed for the medal from the beginning, and they are what carried it: Aladel's pamphlet of August 1834 put them into print, anonymously, and Parisians renamed the medal 'miraculous' on the strength of them. This dataset records the CLAIMING — who reported, who printed, and when — and never that a cure happened. Exactly one recognition act is on this record, and it belongs to a different event in a different city: Cardinal Patrizi's decree of 3 June 1842 on the conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne at Rome. No cure attributed to the medal at Paris carries a Church judgment of its own, and none is asserted here.[20] [5] [14]
Diffusion and attendance, as counted
The numbers in this dataset are always somebody's numbers. Medal diffusion: over 500,000 by 1834 and over a million by 1835 per the chapel's own account; over ten million within seven years and a thousand million by 1876 per the historian Yves Chiron as cited by the French Wikipedia; some twenty million in 1837 alone per Polistena's study. Chapel attendance: close to two million a year in a 2017 Paris tourism observatory survey, about three million for 2025 per the French Wikipedia. Nothing here is reconciled, because the counters do not reconcile it.[5] [19] [9] [22] [21]

Chronology

Key events in chronological order. A ? flag marks dates not yet verified against a primary source.

2 decades with no recorded events (1810–1829)2 decades with no recorded events (1850–1869)3 decades with no recorded events (1900–1929)6 decades with no recorded events (1950–2009) 18061830184918761897193019472017
  1. 18061806-05-02

    Fain-lès-Moutiers, France

    Birth of Catherine Labouré

    Catherine Labouré is born into a farming family in Burgundy, ninth of eleven children.[6] [13]

  2. 2 decades with no recorded events (1810–1829)
  3. 18301830-04-21 ?

    Paris, France

    Catherine Labouré enters the seminary of the Daughters of Charity at the rue du Bac

    Having begun her postulancy at Châtillon-sur-Seine in January 1830, Catherine arrives about three months later at the seminary (novitiate) of the motherhouse, 140 rue du Bac, Paris — a house the Daughters of Charity had occupied since 1813 and whose chapel had been consecrated on 6 August 1815, the company itself having been suppressed in the Revolution and re-established under the Empire. She was one of several hundred sisters in the novitiate; the English Wikipedia dates her entry 21 April 1830, four days before the translation of St Vincent de Paul's relics.[6] [13] [21]

    The chapel's account gives the sequence ('three months after January 1830') but no day; the English Wikipedia gives 21 April 1830 for the start of the novitiate. The day is recorded from the tertiary source and stays flagged.

  4. 18301830-04-25

    Paris, France

    The relics of St Vincent de Paul are translated to the rue de Sèvres

    A great procession carried the relics of St Vincent de Paul from Notre-Dame to the church of the Congregation of the Mission on the rue de Sèvres, with the archbishop, royal authorities, religious communities and the poor of Paris; Charles X attended. Vincent's tomb had been desecrated in the Revolution and his body hidden, and both Vincentian bodies — the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity — had been suppressed and re-established: the translation is the moment the family's public standing was restored, four days after Catherine Labouré entered the novitiate down the road. Catherine is reported to have described a vision of the saint's heart in these days; that report reaches us through her confessor and her own later writings, and is recorded here as a report and not as an occurrence.[15] [13]

  5. 18301830-07-18

    Paris, France

    First reported apparition (night of 18–19 July 1830)

    Catherine Labouré later recounted being awakened at about 11:30 p.m. and led to the chapel, where she reported a roughly two-hour conversation with the Virgin Mary, including warnings of coming calamities in France. The account is known through what she told her confessor Jean-Marie Aladel and through her own later written accounts; she remained anonymous as the seer during her lifetime.[2] [12]

  6. 18301830-07-27

    Paris, France

    The July Revolution — and the archbishop's palace is sacked

    Charles X's restrictive ordinances of 26 July brought Paris into the street: three days of fighting from 27 to 29 July ended the Bourbon restoration and put Louis-Philippe on the throne. On 29 July the crowd sacked the archbishop's palace beside Notre-Dame. This is eight days after the first reported apparition and four months before the medal vision, and it is the political weather of both. It is recorded as the setting, not as a cause and not as a corroboration; no source cited here connects the revolution to what Catherine Labouré reported.[16] [17]

    The three days of fighting are 27–29 July 1830, following the ordinances of 26 July; Charles X abdicated on 2 August and Louis-Philippe was proclaimed on 9 August.

  7. 18301830-11-27

    Paris, France

    Second reported apparition — the medal vision

    During the novices' evening prayer at about 5:30 p.m., Catherine reported seeing the Virgin standing on a globe, rays streaming from her hands, framed by the invocation 'O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you', then a reverse design with the letter M, a cross, and two hearts — with the request, as she reported it: 'Have a medal struck on this model; those who wear it will receive great graces.'[3] [12]

  8. 18301830-12 ?

    Paris, France

    Third reported apparition (December 1830)

    Catherine reported a final apparition in December 1830, repeating the medal vision. The exact day was not recorded — only the month is known, as the French Wikipedia synthesis of the published accounts notes.[4] [12]

    Only the month is attested; no source used gives a day.

  9. 18311831-01-30 ?

    Paris, France

    Catherine Labouré takes her vows and disappears into forty years of obscurity

    Two months after the last reported apparition, Catherine took her vows and was sent to the Hospice d'Enghien at Reuilly, on the other side of Paris, to serve the elderly poor — where she stayed for the rest of her life. She never appeared as the seer: her confessor Aladel refused even the archbishop's request to interview her for the 1836 inquiry, and the pamphlet that made the medal famous named her only as an anonymous nun. The anonymity is not incidental to this record. It is the reason every descriptive statement about 1830 passes through Aladel or through her own writings made years later at a confessor's order.[13] [19] [6]

    The English Wikipedia gives 30 January 1831 for her vows; no primary act of the company was reachable from this session.

  10. 18311831-02-14

    Paris, France

    Notre-Dame and the archbishopric are devastated in the February riots

    A memorial mass for the assassinated duc de Berry at Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois on 14 February gave the pretext for two days of anticlerical rioting in which Notre-Dame and the adjoining archbishop's palace were wrecked — worse, Limouzin-Lamothe judges, than the sack of the previous July. Archbishop Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen lost his residence. He is the authority who, the following year, authorized the striking of the medal: the act came from a hierarchy that had just been driven out of its own buildings, which is context for reading it and not a judgment on it.[17]

    The riots ran 14–15 February 1831; the event is dated at their start.

  11. 18321832-03-26

    Paris, France

    Cholera reaches Paris

    The epidemic ran from 26 March to 30 September 1832 and killed more than 18,400 people in a city of some 786,000 — 12,733 of them in April alone, and 814 on the worst single day. The Daughters of Charity nursed through it, and it is into this that the first medals were distributed in June. The coincidence is part of why the medal spread as fast as it did; it is not evidence about the medal, and the entries keep the two apart.[18] [19]

    ENAP, working from the daily bulletins of the Gazette des tribunaux, gives 26 March to 30 September 1832 and more than 18,400 deaths in Paris; a footnote in the French Wikipedia article rounds the toll to 20,000. The disagreement is recorded, not resolved.

  12. 18321832-06

    Paris, France

    First medals struck and distributed amid the cholera epidemic

    After Fr Aladel obtained the authorization of Archbishop Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen, the goldsmith Adrien Vachette strikes the first medals; the Daughters of Charity begin distributing them in June 1832, as a cholera epidemic kills over 20,000 in Paris. Details differ across sources: the chapel's site says 2,000 first medals distributed in June; the 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia dates the first striking 30 June 1832; Polistena's scholarly study records an order of 20,000 medals placed with Vachette in May 1832, delayed by the epidemic.[5] [8] [9]

    Month secure; the exact day (30 June per the Catholic Encyclopedia) and first batch size (1,500–2,000 per source) disagree across sources.

  13. 18341834-08 ?

    Paris, France

    Aladel prints the first collection of the graces reported after the medal

    Jean-Marie Aladel CM published, over the signature M***, the Notice historique sur l'origine et les effets de la nouvelle médaille — the pamphlet that put the account of the medal's origin and the cures and conversions attributed to it into print, without naming the nun who reported the vision. Ten thousand copies in August 1834, gone in under two months, and four editions by 1835. What is dated here is the PUBLICATION: a partisan of the devotion, who was also the seer's confessor, collecting and circulating claims. That such claims were being made and printed, by whom and when, is the record. Whether any of them happened is not something this dataset says, and none of them carries a Church judgment of its own.[20] [19]

    The French Wikipedia dates the first edition to August 1834 and gives a print run of 10,000 exhausted within two months; the Google Books record reached here is the fourth edition of 1835. The month is recorded from the tertiary source and stays flagged.

  14. 1835 ?

    Paris, France

    Mass diffusion — the people of Paris name the medal 'miraculous'

    Reported cures and conversions drive explosive demand: the chapel's account counts over 500,000 medals by autumn 1834 and over a million worldwide in 1835; the French Wikipedia, citing the historian Yves Chiron (2007), gives over 500,000 distributed by February 1834, more than ten million struck within seven years, and a thousand million passed by 1876; Polistena records some twenty million made in 1837 alone by Vachette and other Paris and Lyon goldsmiths. Every figure here belongs to whoever published it and none is adopted as this dataset's own. The popular renaming is recorded by the chapel's site: 'the people of Paris call the medal miraculous' — a popular attribution, not a canonical title, and one the French Wikipedia glosses as pointing at the medal's reported ORIGIN in a vision rather than at any power in the object.[5] [9] [19]

    A diffusion process, not a dated event; 1835 is the chapel site's 'over a million worldwide' milestone.

  15. 18361836-02-16 ?

    Paris, France

    Canonical inquiry of the archdiocese of Paris opens

    Archbishop de Quélen orders a diocesan investigation, directed by Vicar-General Quentin as promoter, opening (per the Vincentian-derived catechism used here) on 16 February 1836 and running through some nineteen sittings into July. It examined the seer's credibility (through Fr Aladel — Catherine refused to appear and stayed anonymous), the doctrinal content of the reported vision, the medal's extraordinary circulation (with the engraver's testimony), and attested cures and conversions. Its limits are contested between sources: devotional accounts (e.g. the Association of the Miraculous Medal) state the inquiry declared the medal of supernatural origin, while the detailed catechism account says the findings were favorable but the Archbishop pronounced no formal judgment and proceedings lapsed at his death in 1839; the French Wikipedia synthesis likewise notes no completed canonical trial ever declared the apparitions authentic.[10] [11] [12]

    The 16 February 1836 opening date and 19 sittings rest on a single devotional source drawing on 19th-century Vincentian accounts — not yet verified against archival records.

  16. 18421842-01-20

    Rome, Italy

    Reported conversion of Alphonse Ratisbonne at Sant'Andrea delle Fratte

    Alphonse Ratisbonne, a French Jew who had accepted to wear a Miraculous Medal, reported a vision of the Virgin 'as on the medal' in the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte in Rome, followed by his immediate conversion; he was baptized on 31 January 1842. A distinct reported event from the Paris apparitions, with its own Church inquiry (see June 1842).[14] [8]

  17. 18421842-06-03

    Rome, Italy

    Roman canonical inquiry rules on the Ratisbonne conversion

    After a canonical process before the tribunal of the Cardinal Vicar, Cardinal Costantino Patrizi, Vicar-General of Gregory XVI, issues a decree declaring Ratisbonne's instantaneous conversion 'a true and outstanding miracle' wrought by God through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and permitting publication of the acts — a formal Church judgment on this Roman event, separate from any ruling on the Paris apparitions themselves.[14]

  18. 1849 ?

    Paris, France

    The chapel is enlarged for the crowds

    The motherhouse chapel, consecrated in 1815 and built for a private community of several hundred sisters, was enlarged by the architect Gallois to take the crowds the medal had brought. It is the first physical sign that a private novitiate chapel had become a pilgrimage site.[21]

    Year from the French Wikipedia article on the chapel; the building records were not reachable from this session.

  19. 2 decades with no recorded events (1850–1869)
  20. 18761876-12-31

    Paris, France

    Death of Catherine Labouré; her identity as the seer becomes known

    Catherine Labouré dies at the Enghien hospice in Reuilly, Paris, where she had served the elderly poor for 46 years. Her identity as the seer of 1830, kept between her and her confessors for most of her life (the French Wikipedia notes the secret began to leak from about 1855, and she spoke to her superior shortly before dying), becomes publicly known around her death.[6] [12] [13]

  21. 18941894-07-23

    Rome, Italy

    Leo XIII institutes the feast of the Miraculous Medal (27 November)

    After examination of the facts by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, Leo XIII institutes a feast with proper Office and Mass of the Manifestation of the Immaculate Virgin under the title of the Miraculous Medal, celebrated yearly on 27 November — a liturgical act read by commentators as implicit Church approval of the devotion.[8] [12]

  22. 1897 ?

    Rome / Paris

    Leo XIII grants a canonical coronation of the statue

    Three years after instituting the feast, Leo XIII grants a canonical coronation of the statue "of the Immaculate Conception, known as the Miraculous Medal". A coronation is the highest honour the Holy See pays an image and it is an honour paid to an image: it presupposes the cult it crowns and decides nothing about what Catherine Labouré reported seeing in 1830. It belongs with the feast of 1894 on the approval ladder, among the acts on the devotion.[23]

    Only the year is given by the source consulted (the English Wikipedia article); no decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites fixing a day was reached from this session.

  23. 3 decades with no recorded events (1900–1929)
  24. 1930 ?

    Paris, France

    Centenary rebuilding gives the chapel its present shape

    For the centenary of the reported apparitions the architect Richardière added a side aisle with two superimposed galleries — the work that gives the chapel the form visitors see today. Further campaigns followed in 1979–1980 and 2009.[21]

    Year from the French Wikipedia article on the chapel; no primary building record was reachable.

  25. 19331933-03-21 ?

    Reuilly / rue du Bac, Paris

    The body is exhumed, and reported found intact

    Fifty-seven years after her burial, Catherine Labouré's coffin was opened at Reuilly before witnesses said to have included representatives of the archdiocese, the Daughters of Charity, the Congregation of the Mission and medical examiners. What those witnesses REPORTED was a body intact and supple. That report is the datable thing, and it is what this entry records; the dataset does not state that the body was incorrupt, which is a claim, nor that it was not. Later in the year the reliquary was placed in the rue du Bac chapel at the foot of the statue of the Virgin of the Globe, where it remains.[13] [11] [21]

    The day 21 March 1933 is widely given in devotional and encyclopedic accounts; no official process document was reachable from this session, and the repo has an open thread for it.

  26. 19331933-05-28

    Rome, Italy

    Beatification of Catherine Labouré; her body exhumed the same year

    Pius XI beatifies Catherine Labouré on 28 May 1933, ten weeks after the exhumation at Reuilly. A beatification is a judgment about a person — her sanctity and her cult — and commentators have read it as implicit confirmation of her account; it is not a declaratory sentence on the apparitions, and no such sentence is on record.[13] [11] [6]

  27. 19471947-07-27

    Rome, Italy

    Canonization of Catherine Labouré by Pius XII

    Pius XII canonizes Catherine Labouré on 27 July 1947; addressing the pilgrims the next day (a speech published by the Holy See), he recalls the missions she attributed to the Virgin and the medal 'that the voice of the people did not hesitate to call miraculous'.[7] [13]

  28. 6 decades with no recorded events (1950–2009)
  29. 2017

    Paris, France

    Visitor counts for the chapel, as published by the counting bodies

    A 2017 survey by the Paris tourism economic observatory put the chapel at close to two million visitors a year, eighth among the city's cultural sites — ahead of the Arc de Triomphe — and, in the reporting, France's second pilgrimage destination after Lourdes. The French Wikipedia article carries the same two-million figure and adds a higher one, about three million, for 2025. The counts belong to the bodies that made them; the shrine publishes no audited figure that this session could reach, and the gap between the two numbers is left standing.[22] [21]

Key figures

Catherine Labouré

1806–1876 · France

Daughter of Charity; the reported seer of the 1830 rue du Bac apparitions. Remained publicly anonymous as the seer during her lifetime, serving the elderly poor at Reuilly for 46 years; beatified 1933, canonized 1947.[6] [13] [7]

Jean-Marie Aladel CM

1800–1865 · France

Vincentian priest, Catherine Labouré's confessor and spiritual director — the channel through which her account reached Church authorities; obtained Archbishop de Quélen's authorization and commissioned the medal from the goldsmith Vachette.[9] [8]

Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen

1778–1839 · France

Archbishop of Paris (1821–1839). Authorized the striking of the medal (1832) and ordered the diocesan canonical inquiry of 1836; per the account used here he pronounced no formal judgment before his death in 1839.[9] [10]

Quentin

France

Vicar-General of Paris and promoter of the 1836 diocesan inquiry, which he directed through some nineteen sittings (per a devotional source drawing on 19th-century Vincentian accounts; biographical dates to verify).[10]

Adrien Vachette

1753–1839 · France

Paris goldsmith who received the order for the first medals in May 1832 and struck them from June 1832; his firm's sales figures document the medal's mass diffusion.[9]

Alphonse Ratisbonne

1814–1884 · France

French Jewish banker's son whose reported vision and instantaneous conversion at Sant'Andrea delle Fratte, Rome (20 January 1842) while wearing the medal was declared a miracle by the tribunal of the Cardinal Vicar in June 1842; later a Catholic priest.[14]

Costantino Patrizi Naro

1798–1876 · Italy

Cardinal Vicar of Rome under Gregory XVI; baptized Ratisbonne (31 January 1842) and signed the decree of 3 June 1842 declaring his conversion a miracle wrought through Mary's intercession.[14]

Related organizations

Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul

Founded 1633 · Paris, France

The company Catherine Labouré belonged to; its motherhouse chapel at 140 rue du Bac is the site of the reported apparitions, and its sisters distributed the first medals in 1832. Not an enclosed order — a society of apostolic life serving the poor.[1] [5]

Congregation of the Mission (Vincentians / Lazarists)

Founded 1625 · Paris, France

Fr Aladel's congregation, which directs the Daughters of Charity spiritually; the 1894 feast was granted to it, and Vincentian houses worldwide propagate the devotion. Distinct from the Daughters of Charity, though both are of the Vincentian family.[8] [11]

Association of the Miraculous Medal

Perryville, Missouri, USA (US branch)

Vincentian-run devotional association propagating the medal; its historical account is cited here as a sympathetic, devotional source, not as an independent one.[11]

Disambiguation & nuance

Reported apparitions with partial and layered Church judgments are easily flattened into either 'approved miracle' or 'mere legend'. This project records who reported what and when, and what the Church ruled and when — nothing more.

Approved for pilgrimage is not the same as approved as an apparition — and that is the Church's rule, not this page's

A shrine, a crowned image, a feast, indulgences, a papal visit: it is reasonable to read all that as the Church saying the apparition happened. It is not what the Church says it is doing, and since 2024 it says so in writing. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith's "Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena" (17 May 2024) sets out six possible conclusions, and art. 23 makes the position explicit: "as a rule, neither the Diocesan Bishop, nor the Episcopal Conferences, nor the Dicastery will declare that these phenomena are of supernatural origin", though the Pope may authorise a special procedure. The ordinary favourable outcome is now "Nihil obstat", which art. 17 defines as acknowledging "many signs of the action of the Holy Spirit" in a spiritual experience "without expressing any certainty about the supernatural authenticity of the phenomenon itself". The document's own presentation adds that most shrines "have never had an official declaration of the supernatural nature of the events". The reason is what a private revelation is. Public revelation closed with the apostles, so no apparition adds an article of faith, and even an approved one obliges no one to believe — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said exactly that when it published the third part of the Fátima secret in 2000. What a bishop is actually asked is a pastoral question: is this devotion safe, is it free of doctrinal error, is it bearing good fruit? That can be answered yes without answering the historical question, and usually is. The same acts are granted to devotions with no apparition behind them at all — Our Lady of the Rosary and Our Lady of Mount Carmel have feasts, crowned images and basilicas, and there is no reported apparition to approve. So this page is not withholding approval; it is saying who gave which one, about what. Where a bishop did rule on an apparition, the ladder says so in his own words and marks the rung favourable — Lourdes 1862 and La Salette 1851 are quoted verbatim, Fátima 1930 is cited to its pastoral letter. What the ladder refuses to do is upgrade a crown into a verdict. If it did, a case a bishop examined and endorsed would look identical to a case nobody ever ruled on, because both have pilgrims; and the reverse error would follow just as easily, reading a Roman act against one seer's later writings as Rome condemning the apparition. Keeping the objects apart is the only way the chart carries information at all. Where the sources themselves say the Church's recognition is "implicit", the page records that word too, and does not promote it.[24]

Reported apparition ≠ Church-certified apparition

The 1830 rue du Bac apparitions are reported events, attested through Catherine Labouré via her confessor Aladel and her later written accounts. Church approval attached to the medal, the feast (1894) and the seer's canonization (1947); the French Wikipedia synthesis notes that no completed canonical trial ever formally declared the apparitions themselves authentic, while devotional sources describe the 1836 inquiry as recognizing the medal's supernatural origin. Both readings are recorded, attributed to their sources.[12] [11] [10]

Our Lady of Grace(s) ≠ one single devotion

In Brazil and the Hispanic world the medal's image is venerated as Nossa Senhora das Graças / Nuestra Señora de las Gracias, but 'Our Lady of Grace' also names older, unrelated devotions and images elsewhere. This chronology covers only the rue du Bac / Miraculous Medal devotion.[1] [8]

The Ratisbonne event (Rome, 1842) ≠ the rue du Bac apparitions (Paris, 1830)

Ratisbonne's reported vision at Sant'Andrea delle Fratte is a separate reported event, with its own canonical inquiry and its own formal decree (Cardinal Patrizi, 3 June 1842). Its approval is a judgment on that Roman conversion, not a canonical sentence on the Paris apparitions.[14]

'Miraculous' is a popular name, not a canonical verdict

The medal was struck in 1832 as the 'medal of the Immaculate Conception'; the chapel's own account records that it was the people of Paris who began calling it 'miraculous' amid reported cures and conversions. The name records popular devotion; each attributed miracle claim stands or falls on its own evidence and, where it exists, its own Church judgment.[5] [8]

A reported cure ≠ a recognized miracle

Two things attached to a miracle claim are datable and only these are in this chronology. The ACCOUNT: that a cure or conversion was REPORTED, by whom, and when the report is first attested — Aladel's pamphlet of 1834 is the type case, and the events that carry such material name the reporter, never a beneficiary. The RECOGNITION ACT: a dated Church judgment with a document, of which there is exactly one here, Cardinal Patrizi's decree of 3 June 1842 — and that decree concerns Ratisbonne's conversion at Rome, not the medal and not the Paris apparitions. A cure claimed for the medal with no named reporter and no Church act is not in this dataset at all.[20] [14]

References

24 sources · 24 with an Internet Archive fallback. Sources span the spectrum of perspectives by design; contested claims are attributed to their authors.

  1. Les Apparitions et la Médaille · 🗄 archived 2026-05-18 Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse, Paris · web The chapel's own site (Daughters of Charity) — the devotion's primary institutional voice; sympathetic by nature.
  2. Nuit du 18 juillet 1830 · 🗄 archived 2026-03-11 Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse, Paris (The chapel's own site — the devotion's primary institutional voice; sympathetic by nature.) · web
  3. 27 novembre 1830 · 🗄 archived 2026-07-21 Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse, Paris (The chapel's own site — the devotion's primary institutional voice; sympathetic by nature.) · web
  4. Décembre 1830 · 🗄 archived 2026-07-24 Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse, Paris (The chapel's own site — the devotion's primary institutional voice; sympathetic by nature.) · web
  5. La Médaille Miraculeuse · 🗄 archived 2026-04-19 Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse, Paris (The chapel's own site — the devotion's primary institutional voice; sympathetic by nature.) · web
  6. Catherine Labouré · 🗄 archived 2026-06-07 Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse, Paris (The chapel's own site — the devotion's primary institutional voice; sympathetic by nature.) · web
  7. Discours de Pie XII aux pèlerins réunis à Rome pour la canonisation de sainte Catherine Labouré (28 juillet 1947) · 🗄 archived 2026-05-18 Holy See (vatican.va) (Papal speech the day after the 27 July 1947 canonization — a Holy See primary source.) · official
  8. Miraculous Medal — The Catholic Encyclopedia (1911) · 🗄 archived 2026-06-16 Robert Appleton Company / New Advent · encyclopedia Near-contemporary Catholic reference work (1911) — confessional perspective, useful for dates of the striking (30 June 1832) and the 1894 feast.
  9. Joyce C. Polistena, 'The Image of Mary of the Miraculous Medal: A Valiant Woman', Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 11:2 (2012) · 🗄 archived 2025-06-11 Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide · academic Independent scholarly study in a peer-reviewed journal of nineteenth-century visual culture — source for Vachette, the May 1832 order of 20,000, and production figures.
  10. The Miraculous Medal — A Short Catechism · 🗄 archived 2025-10-03 Knights of Columbus council site · web Devotional catechism reproducing detail from 19th-century Vincentian accounts (the 1836 inquiry's opening date, sittings, evidence classes, and its lack of a pronounced judgment) — sympathetic perspective; archival verification pending.
  11. Story of the Miraculous Medal · 🗄 archived 2026-07-25 Association of the Miraculous Medal · web A Vincentian association in the United States; its own devotional account of the medal — sympathetic perspective; states the 1836 inquiry 'declared the medal of supernatural origin'.
  12. Apparitions mariales de la rue du Bac — Wikipédia (fr) · 🗄 archived 2026-03-11 Wikipedia (French) · encyclopedia Tertiary synthesis — used for the attestation chain and for the observation that no completed canonical trial declared the apparitions authentic; claims should be traced to its cited literature.
  13. Catherine Labouré — Wikipedia (en) · 🗄 archived 2026-06-28 Wikipedia (English) · encyclopedia Tertiary synthesis — used for beatification (28 May 1933, Pius XI), canonization (27 July 1947, Pius XII) and the 1933 exhumation.
  14. Alphonse Ratisbonne — Rome, Italy (1842) · 🗄 archived 2026-06-09 The Miracle Hunter (Michael O'Neill) · database Catalog of Marian apparition claims and their canonical statuses — devotional-leaning reference; source for the 3 June 1842 Patrizi decree.
  15. The Translation of the Relics of Saint Vincent de Paul · 🗄 archived 2026-02-07 Congregatio Missionis (Congregation of the Mission), Rome · web The Vincentians' own official site — an in-house institutional source, used for the date and shape of the 25 April 1830 procession and for how the congregation itself narrates its recovery after the revolutionary suppression.
  16. July Revolution (French history) · 🗄 archived 2026-08-06 Encyclopaedia Britannica · encyclopedia General reference, cited only to date the ordinances of 26 July 1830, the three days of fighting and the change of regime — the political weather of the months between the reported apparitions.
  17. La dévastation de Notre-Dame et de l'archevêché de Paris en février 1831 · 🗄 archived 2026-01-07 Roger Limouzin-Lamothe, Revue d'histoire de l'Église de France 50/147 (1964), pp. 125–134 · academic Peer-reviewed article in the standard French journal of ecclesiastical history, open access at Persée — used for the two sackings of the archbishopric, 29 July 1830 and 14–15 February 1831.
  18. L'épidémie de choléra à Paris en 1832 · 🗄 archived 2026-08-10 École nationale d'administration pénitentiaire (ENAP), France · academic Heritage collection of a French public institution, presenting the epidemic through the daily bulletins of the Gazette des tribunaux from 30 March 1832 — used for the epidemic's dates and for the official death toll, which other sources round differently.
  19. Médaille miraculeuse · 🗄 archived 2026-01-02 Wikipédia (fr) · encyclopedia Tertiary source, used provisionally for the diffusion figures, which it attributes to the historian Yves Chiron (2007) — the attribution chain is recorded rather than collapsed, and Chiron's book was not read from this session.
  20. Notice historique sur l'origine et les effets de la nouvelle médaille … généralement connue sous le nom de Médaille miraculeuse (par M***, prêtre de la Congrégation de la Mission de St-Lazare) · 🗄 archived 2026-08-10 Jean-Marie Aladel CM / Google Books catalogue record · book Primary document — the confessor's own anonymous pamphlet, the first printed collection of the graces reported after the medal, and a partisan document by definition. The catalogue record reached here is the fourth edition (1835); the first appeared in August 1834. Cited for the fact, date and authorship of the publication.
  21. Chapelle Notre-Dame-de-la-Médaille-Miraculeuse de Paris · 🗄 archived 2025-11-06 Wikipédia (fr) · encyclopedia Tertiary source, used provisionally for the chapel's building history — consecration in 1815, the 1849 and 1930 enlargements, the placing of the reliquary in 1933 — and for one of the circulating attendance figures.
  22. Paris : cette chapelle attire deux millions de visiteurs chaque année · 🗄 archived 2025-11-14 Aleteia — édition française · news Catholic online magazine — devotional in outlook, cited only because it names the body behind the number: the figure it reports comes from a 2017 survey by the Paris tourism economic observatory, and the count is attributed there rather than to the shrine.
  23. Miraculous Medal · 🗄 archived 2026-08-05 Wikipedia (English) · encyclopedia Crowd-edited tertiary source, cited for two things the French article does not carry: the two conclusions it attributes to the 1836 inquiry — that the medal was of supernatural origin and that the wonders worked through it were genuine — and Leo XIII's grant of a canonical coronation in 1897. The first flatly contradicts the detailed nineteenth-century account this dataset also cites, which says no judgment followed; the contradiction is recorded on the rung, not resolved. Notably, the article nowhere says the apparitions were approved.
  24. Norms for Proceeding in the Discernment of Alleged Supernatural Phenomena (17 May 2024) · 🗄 archived 2026-07-24 Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Holy See · official The Church's current procedure for judging reported apparitions, in force since 19 May 2024; its art. 27 entirely replaces the norms of 25 February 1978. Read in full for this dataset. Cited here for the rule it states rather than for anything it decides about this case: it is not applied retroactively, and no case in this chronology was judged under it.