The center panel depicts the first apparition when Our Lady was seated at the foot of the altar after an angel called Catherine from her sleep to come and kneel and converse with Mary for two hours on the evening of July 18th which stretched into July 19th. This is readily recognized as the "Virgin of the Chair." (1st arch).

 

   The second arch illustrates Catherine kneeling before Our Lady during the second apparition 4 months later on November 27th. During this apparition, St. Catherine was given two visions. In the first Our Lady appeared hovering above the altar, clouds surrounding her and standing on the globe of the world, crushing the serpent's head. (2nd arch) In her hands she held a glowing golden ball - or globe - radiating as she offered it to the Heavenly Father. The glowing golden ball represents all of mankind's goodness, which, with eyes uplifted, she offers to the Father as Advocate for us. In return the Beatific Vision radiates His Divine Mercy upon His little ones through His Beloved Daughter Mary. For on her hands are rings which diffuse the powerful graces and mercy God gives to His faithful ones, depicted by rays cascading on the globe beneath from the gems on her fingers. Our Lady confirmed to Catherine, "These rays symbolize the graces I shed upon those who ask for them. The gems from which rays do not fall are the graces for which souls forget to ask." It is a confirmation of her Divine Son Jesus' words in Matthew 7: 7 and Luke 11: 9, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you." It is also an affirmation that His Blessed Mother is the Advocate, Mediatrix and, working with her Divine Spouse the Holy Spirit in preparing for Christ's second coming, the Co-Redemptrix. It was in the first phase of the November 27th apparition where Our Lady conveyed the meaning of the "Virgin of the Globe" or "Virgin Most Powerful."

    In the final arch of the center panel, (3rd arch) Our Lady appeared above the tabernacle, still standing on the world, still crushing the serpent's head. The glowing golden globe - our gift to God - was now gone and her hands outstretched as she was extending God's gift to us through the rays of Divine Mercy radiating outward and covering the earth. This is the image Mary has always conveyed of her Immaculate Conception and much the same manner she appeared to Saint Bernadette Soubirous twenty-eight years later. This third arch is the way Our Lady is depicted on the medal that came to be known as the Miraculous Medal, though that was not the title Mary requested. Rather she had requested it be called the Medal of the Immaculate Conception. This was twenty-four years before Blessed Pope Pius IX declared the Immaculate Conception a Dogma of the Church.

    The medal to the far right is the medal Our Lady asked be cast in 1992 as a fulfillment of her request to St. Catherine. It depicts the image St. Catherine had in the first phase of the second apparition (2nd arch above). On both the Medal of the Immaculate Conception and the Medal of the Virgin Most Powerful - Virgin of the Globe, the words "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee" encircle the image. Those same words were seen in both phases of St. Catherine's second apparition.

                                           

Preamble:  

The Miraculous Medal given to her children by the Mother of Jesus and the Mother of all the earth’s children is, without a doubt, one of the most popular Sacramentals given by Mother Church to her Faithful. It is not surprising! The Blessed Virgin promised and continues to promise that all who wear it with reverence bind themselves to her in a filial way as children to a loving, caring, gentle, and generous mother. In the last century continuing in our own very day, the individual and personal loneliness experienced first in the machine age and now in the cold dominance of technology, at a time when our mentalized soul clamors for warmth and loving acceptance, there is the silent craving for the touch, the caress, and the concern of a mother. Making use of the Miraculous Medal that she offers to her children seems to fulfill all of those needs, for in wearing it, at her request; she is able to make herself known and accepted, making life in this vale of tears more tolerable and bearable. 
                                                                             

Catherine’s mouth was sealed; her hands were tied. Nonetheless, she insisted that the Virgin wanted a medal of what she showed her. When she insisted that she saw the Blessed Virgin was standing on the earth, holding a globe in her hands and looking up to heaven, he pointed out to her that she was foolish. He retorted: “Here you say that she was standing on the earth and yet, was holding up the earth.. It is nonsense.” Her spiritual director nonetheless, to quiet her, went forth and had a medal struck, not as she instructed, but took an existing statue of the Virgin, had put rays coming out of her hands as they aimed downward. It was this form that became known as the Miraculous Medal. It was struck in 1832. At the end of May of that year, the first supply of 1500 medals were delivered to her spiritual director. By the end of 1834, as many as 8 million medals were in circulation, being as far spread as China.

Bringing up her courage and saying to her spiritual director that she did not see the Virgin as he had her on the medal, he responded that the Virgin went along with it because of the many miracles that were being performed through it as it was. He chose not to make any changes. The same medal that was struck is what the world knows as the Miraculous Medal and it is worn by millions upon millions of people.

In the year 1992, a certain Mary Kathryn Johnson heard a voice within her that she knew was not her own, that she was to complete the mission of St. Catherine Laboure. With the blessing of her bishop who told her to go ahead and do what she was instructed to do, and with the guidance of her spiritual director, in 1994 she had the first several thousand medals struck of the Virgin of the Globe according to the description given her by St. Catherine in her later days.

Within the year 2000, conducted by her spiritual director, a deeper research was made of the issue to the degree that the entire history of St. Catherine’s state of affairs was drawn out of the archives of her canonization process by a mandate given to Fr. Rene Laurentin, the famed marialigist, by the Sisters at Rue du Bac. There have been four large volumes written in French, the third of which has already been translated into English. Few of these are still available. All of the researched material had been sent in 2002 to the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith under Cardinal Ratsinger by Bishop Scarpone of Honduras. Archbishop Hannan of New Orleans had conducted an interview and found that all was in order. In 2006, His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI gave the Virgin of the Globe Ministry a warm welcome.
You may receive a copy of this letter from the Vatican on request.