Tucked away at the end of a courtyard across from Le Bon Marché department store, this extraordinary and beautiful chapel is a place of pilgrimage. In 1830, it's claimed the Virgin Mary spoke to 24-year-old Catherine Labouré, and in a series of three miraculous apparitions that took place here, the young novice seminary sister was told to have a medal made that would protect and grace those who wore it. The first Miraculous Medals were made in 1832.
The same year a cholera epidemic plagued Paris and the medals' popularity spread rapidly as wearers of the medal apparently found themselves miraculously cured or protected from the deadly disease. Devout Roman Catholics around the world still wear the medal today.
Catherine Labouré (1806–76), the eighth child of a Burgundian farmer, was beatified in 1933 and her body moved to a reliquary beneath the altar to the right as you face the main altar inside the chapel.
