On this feast of the Miraculous Medal “How to actualize the message of theRue du Bac in today’s world?” is the question asked by the former Director General of the Daughters of Charity, Fernando Quintano, C. M.

In the first part I will try to show why it is necessary to re-read the message of St. Catherine for our times. Such a re-reading will attempt to understand the message in the way the Church does when dealing with private revelations. Here also I will use the contributions of human sciences.

In the second part I will speak of the message of the Rue du Bac and I will focus on the Medal as the privileged representation of said message.

In the third part I will make a re-reading of that message in light of the Pope’s letter that was addressed to the whole Church on the occasion of the closing of the Jubilee Year (6 January 2001). In it, John Paul II points out some fundamental lines of action that should inspire all pastoral projects at the beginning of the third millennium.

In any re-reading of the message of the Rue du Bac, it will be necessary to keep before us St. Catherine’s identity and our own identity in the Church, namely, followers of Christ in the footsteps of Vincent of Paul and Louise de Marillac.

VinFormation has a slide presentation of this material.

Here is the Vincentian Encyclopedia article in outline

• 1 Introduction
• 2 Re-reading the message in light of the Magisterium of the Church and of human science
• 3 The message of the Rue du Bac
  • 3.1 Catherine’s story
  • 3.2 A re-reading of St. Catherine’s visions
  • 3.3 The sign of the Miraculous Medal
• 4 A re-reading of the message at the beginning of the third millennium
  • 4.1 “Come to the foot of the altar; here graces will be given to those who ask”
  • 4.2 “She held in her hands a sphere that represented the world”
• 5 Conclusion