Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

"Our Lady of the Moors: The Miraculous Medal in Perryville"

Perryville, Missouri (United States) (1818)

In Perryville, Missouri, stands the National Shrine of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, in the place known as St. Mary's of the Barrens. The name speaks of its humble origins: a land of prairies and scrubland where, in the early 19th century, the Vincentian Fathers put down roots.

The most firmly established and frequently cited historical fact is that the Vincentian community arrived in the United States in 1816 and that in 1818 they founded St. Mary's Church there, one of the first Catholic settlements in that border region. Over time, this church became associated with the great national shrine, whose Miraculous Medal Church was built in 1929.

The devotion that gives the shrine its name did not originate in Missouri, but in Paris: it stems from the 1830 apparitions to Saint Catherine Labouré, in which the Virgin Mary requested that the medal be struck, which would soon be called "miraculous" because of the many graces attributed to it. It is important, therefore, to distinguish: what is specific to Perryville and well-documented is the Vincentian history—the arrival in 1816, the founding in 1818, the construction in 1929—while the spiritual root of the Miraculous Medal belongs to the history of the Parisian devotion, not to a local miracle in Perryville.

The connection with the Rosary is primarily devotional: the Miraculous Medal is part of Marian piety centered on Mary's intercession, closely linked in practice to the recitation of the Rosary. However, none of the sources consulted contain an official text from the shrine that explicitly states this connection; it is more a reflection of the general atmosphere of Marian devotion.