Saint Catherine Laboure (1806-1876) was a visionary to whom the Blessed Mother gave the Miraculous Medal. Born into a farming family in the village of Fain-les-Moutiers, in France, Catherine's mother died when she was nine years old. She felt called to the religious life and, after declining two marriage proposals, entered the Sisters of Charity at their convent on the Rue de Bac in Paris. She had a special devotion to St. Vincent de Paul, whose incorrupt heart was kept in a reliquary in the convent chapel, and on his feast day (July 18th) in 1830 St. Catherine had the first of several apparitions of the Blessed Mother in the chapel. In an apparition on November 30th, 1830, she was given the design of what has become the Miraculous Medal, so called because of the many "miraculous" conversions and blessings that have come to those who wear the medal. Catherine died at the convent on December 31st, 1876. Following her beatification, her body was exhumed in 1933 and found to be completely incorrupt. She was canonized on July 27, 1947, and her incorrupt body reposes in a glass coffin in the Rue de Bac convent chapel.