Miraculous Medal Prayer

This prayer was revealed to St. Catherine Labouré, a young Daughter of Charity novice in Paris, during a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1830. According to St. Catherine's account, Mary appeared standing on a globe, rays of light streaming from her hands, and instructed that a medal be struck with this image and the prayer engraved around it, promising graces to all who wore it with faith. The medal and prayer spread with remarkable speed across France and then the world, and became known as the "Miraculous Medal" after numerous reported healings and conversions were associated with it. The prayer's phrase "conceived without sin" refers to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception — that Mary was preserved from original sin from the moment of her own conception — which was formally defined as Catholic dogma by Pope Pius IX in 1854, just 24 years after the apparition. St. Catherine kept her identity as the visionary secret for over 40 years, revealing it only shortly before her death in 1876.