“O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you.”

The Council of Trent (1545-1563) explicitly declared that Mary was exempt from the taint of original sin.

At the First Council of Baltimore in 1846 the Catholic bishops of the United States of America chose Mary under the title of her Immaculate Conception as the patron saint of the nation.

Then in 1854 Blessed Pius IX explained that Mary was preserved from original sin by a “singular grace and privilege” given her by God “in view of the merits of Jesus Christ," Redeemer of the human race. Mary, like every other human being, needed the redemptive benefits of Christ. But in anticipation of what God did for all through Christ, she alone was preserved from original sin “from the first moment of her conception.” As one writer asserted, hers was a “redemption by exemption.” By her Immaculate Conception she was conceived in the fullness of grace, in the state of closest possible union with God in view of her future role as the Mother of the Redeemer.

Mary appeared to an uneducated and sickly youngster, St. Bernadette Soubirous, at Lourdes. When Bernadette asked the Virgin Mary on March 25, 1858, to identify herself, Mary replied, “I am the Immaculate Conception.”

—Source: University of Dayton

February 11 — The feast of Our Lady of Lourdes
March 25 — The feast of the Annunciation
April 16 — The feast day of St. Bernadette
December 8 — Mary’s Immaculate Conception

We hope to honor the beautiful gift of Mary’s fiat and her immaculate conception with our Catholic jewelry.