Catherine Labouré — Blue Eyes After 57 Years

The Vincentian Visionary

Catherine Labouré entered the Daughters of Charity in Paris in 1830, the same year she reported visions of the Virgin Mary that led to the creation of the Miraculous Medal. She spent the rest of her life in obscurity, only revealing her identity as the visionary shortly before her death in 1876. By the time she died, over a billion Miraculous Medals had been produced.

The 1933 Exhumation

In 1933, 57 years after Catherine's burial, her body was exhumed as part of the beatification process. The coffin was opened in the presence of Cardinal Verdier, the Archbishop of Paris, civil officials, and physicians. Those present reported the body appeared fresh, the skin had not darkened, the limbs were supple, and the eyes — blue in life — were still blue and intact. This testimony comes from multiple witnesses with no obvious motive to falsify, and it is the core of the incorruptibility claim.

The Display at Rue du Bac

Catherine was beatified in 1933 and canonized in 1947. Her body was placed in a glass reliquary under the altar at the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal in Paris, where it can be viewed today. Unlike Bernadette Soubirous, no wax mask over the face has been documented publicly for Catherine — though what visitors see today versus original tissue condition is not independently verifiable.

What We Don't Know

No chemical or forensic analysis of the tissue has been published in peer-reviewed literature. Whether embalming was performed at death — a common practice for prominent religious in 19th-century France — is not clearly established in available sources. The case carries more intrinsic interest than John XXIII or Padre Pio because the natural mechanisms are less fully documented, but that ambiguity cuts both ways.