Saint Catherine

French ecclesiastic, a Roman Catholic nun and visionary, canonized by the church as a Saint, beatified in 1933 and canonized in 1947.

Catherine was born to a successful farming family, and she was the ninth of eleven children When she was nine, her mother died and she was raised by aunts until she was eleven. As a child, she attended morning mass several times a week, getting up to walk three kilometers for the 5:30 AM service. During a visit to a hospital run by the Sisters of Charity, she had a vision in which an old man, later determined to be Saint Vincent de Paul, told her that God wanted her to work with the sick.

In October 1828, her dad sent her to Paris to work as a maid in his brother's home. She longed to become a nun and on 22 January 1830 she was admitted as a postulant at the Charity Hospice in Chatillon. Three months later she was admitted as a novice at the Seminary of the Charity Nuns of Paris; she had frequent visions of the Lord and of St. Vincent while there. Simple, quiet and unassuming, the other Sisters sometimes teased and ridiculed Catherine about her submissiveness.

On 18 July 1830, 11:30 PM, an angel came to wake her and guided her to the Chapel where she had her first apparition of the Blessed Virgin. In this, the most famous of her visions, she was shown the medal of Immaculate Conception and was told to spread devotion. She told no one of her miraculous experience besides her spiritual director, Father Aladel. Fully convinced of her sincerity, he went to the archbishop and received sanction to strike the medal. Now known as the "Miraculous Medal," it is inscribed with "O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you!" and is well known throughout the Catholic world. At the end of July 1830, she foresaw a revelation of the death of the Archbishop during the riots of 1848, and of the Commune of 1870.

On 27 November 1830, c. 8:00 PM, she had a second vision of the Holy Mother.