TEXT OF THE DOCUMENT OF THE PONTIFICAL APPROBATION OF THE ASSOCIATION OF THE MIRACULOUS MEDAL

ACTA OF POPE PIUS X
APOSTOLIC LETTERS

POPE PIUS X FOR AN EVERLASTING MEMORIAL
Our beloved son, Antoine Fiat, Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission and of the Daughters of Charity, have informed us of the existence, in many dioceses of the Catholic world of an Association of the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception, whose purpose and statutes are expressed in the following articles:

ARTICLE  1.  The Association of the Sacred Medal of the Immaculate Conception stands as a living and constant reminder of the apparition of the Immaculate Virgin in 1830, whose feast is celebrated annually on November 27.  In this apparition the Holy Virgin gave a model of the Medal which spread through the world.  It was called “miraculous” by the people because of the many remarkable favors that it is believed have happened through divine mediation.

ARTICLE 2.  The Association has as its end to attributing to the Virgin Mary, conceived without original sin, the honor that is due her,  achieving their own sanctification, exercising its apostolate, both of which the Holy Medal challenges and helps as much for the symbolism it shows as by virtue of those who wear it.

ARTICLE 3.  In each diocese, the diocesan directors, chosen by their respective Ordinaries, govern the canonically erected Association, according to the spirit, laws and customs which are its own, under the authority of the Director General alone.

ARTICLE 4.  According to the concession granted by Us June 3, 1905, the Association of the Sacred Medal of the Immaculate Conception places the same indulgences and enjoys the same privileges as the so-called Society of the Blue Scapular.

ARTICLE 5.  All of the faithful of either gender can belong to the Association, participating in its privileges, by wearing around their neck the Sacred Medal blessed and conferred by a priest who has the faculty, and according to the rite approved by our predecessor Leo XIII, of recent memory, April 19, 1895.

ARTICLE 6.  The principal feast of the Association is November 27, the day on which the Apparition of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal is commemorated.

ARTICLE 7.  The members, who do not incur a new obligation are urged to repeat frequently the invocation carved on the medal: “Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you!”

Then, as a spiritual benefit of so fruitful an Association, spread, thanks be to God, to peoples and nations, even the most separated by great distances of land and sea, requires a Director General designated by the Holy See, we have believed it opportune to add the articles which follow:

With the fullness of our Apostolic power, and by the unity as much as by the perpetuity of the Association of the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception, now and forever, we direct and decree that now and in the future that the Director General would be the Superior General of the Congregation of the Mission and the Daughters of Charity, principally because this Medal was revealed by the Mother of God to one of the Daughters of Charity, the Venerable Servant of God, Sister Catherine Laboure.

Finally, attentive to the difficulty of inscribing members in the Register of the Association, above all, at the time of missions with our apostolic authority we dispense from such an inscription.

“We decree that the present apostolic letter is and should always be signed, valid and effective which achieves and produces fully and integrally its effects, which is seconded in all and by all fully for now and in the future who ought to be judged and defined by whatever rights, ordinary and delegated, in conformity with what is above and that, if anyone with any authority, known or unknown, presents anything to the contrary, it would be null and without effect.  Notwithstanding any apostolic dispositions and constitutions, either those worthy of special mention or any to the contrary.  This will be valid in perpetuity in the future.  We ask that the same faith sworn now and to be presented and shown, be sworn also to the traditions and examples of the presenter even to the publishing, always signed by some public notary and sealed with the seal of a person of ecclesiastical dignity”.

Given in Rome, along in union with Saint Peter, under the ring of the Fisherman, July 8, 1909, the sixth year of our Pontificate.

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