The Walk Home/
The Shrine

Zoë joined the Sisters of Charity against her father's wishes and took the name Catherine. Throughout her adult life she received visions from heaven. In one of them, the Virgin Mary told her to create a religious medal which would bestow divine favor on all who wore it. She disclosed these messages only to her confessor, Father Aladel. In 1832 he had the medals manufactured, and within weeks the wearers were reporting miracles. Word spread that the design of the miraculous medal was revealed by Mary Herself to an anonymous nun. Catherine and Father Aladel kept their secret for forty-six years until just before she died, when she wrote an account of her visions.

Sixty years later, during beatification proceedings, her body was exhumed. She appeared alive. The corpse was treated with chemicals and put on display. Today it lies in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal in Paris. Her own blue eyes still shine, looking upward. Her heart and hands are enshrined elsewhere.