The Medal and the South Cross

Missionaries of the Sacred Heart · Papua New Guinea · since 1882

The first missionaries and Marian devotion

In 1882, the Fathers of the Sacred Heart (Missionarii Sacratissimi Cordis - MSC), a congregation founded in France in 1854, received from the Vatican the task of evangelizing the vast and difficult territory of Papua New Guinea. The first missionaries landed on the south-east coast of the country carrying, along with the Gospels, the Miraculous Medal - the Marian sacramental from the apparitions of the Virgin to Saint Catherine Labouré in Paris in 1830.

The medal became the first Christian symbol many Papuans played physically. The missionaries distributed it as a gesture of approach and protection, and devotion to "the Lady of the Medal" (so called by local catechists) was one of the most effective vectors of evangelization in the first decades.

A deeply inculturated Church

What distinguishes the Catholic history of Papua New Guinea is not a only spectacular miracle, but the slow and deep inculturation of Marian devotion in a territory with more than 800 different languages. Each linguistic community was adopting Mary with its own names, songs and images. Local catechists - lay men and women who acted in areas where no priest arrived for months - taught the Rosary as the first prayer and the figure of Mary as a universal mother able to transcend all tribal borders.

The living legacy of the MSC

Today, Papua New Guinea is one of the most Catholic countries in Oceania: close to 27% of its eight million inhabitants are Catholic, with a particularly strong presence in the regions of Madang, New Britain and Sepik. The Episcopal Conference of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands maintains as one of its central Marian symbols the image of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, in direct continuity with the first mystical gesture of 1882.

The MSC Fathers also founded the country's first Catholic university - the Unitech University of Lae - and a vast hospital network, thus consolidating an ecclesial presence that began with a medal and a name: that of Mary.

Our Lady of the Miracle Medal,
You who crossed the borders of the tribes and the languages
to be the mother of all,
He continues to join the peoples who still seek their creator.
Amen.