Fifty Million Medals

At St. Vincent's Seminary and Mary's Central Shrine in Germantown, Pa., everyone bustled through preparations for this week's big celebration. Philadelphia's Cardinal Archbishop Dougherty himself was to be on hand; there would be more than a dozen bishops and scores of priests to celebrate a golden jubilee Mass in honor of the Rev. Joseph A. Skelly's 50th year as a priest and the 35th anniversary of the organization he founded. Only one man looked forward to the occasion "with much unpleasantness." Brushing the cigar ashes off his black suit, spry, 76-year-old Father Skelly complained: "They've all ganged up on me."

Dragged out to dinner on his 45th anniversary, Father Skelly had celebrated by ordering two fried eggs. This week he would have preferred a simple Mass and a breakfast with his staff. But too many people wanted to do him honor: around the necks of 50 million men & women all over the world he has figuratively hung copies of a simple medallion known as the "Miraculous Medal."

The so-called Miraculous Medal originated in Paris, where it was designed according to specifications which St. Catherine Laboure said were given to her by the Virgin Mary in an apparition on Nov. 27, 1830. When Joseph Skelly was a boy in Germantown his mother hung one of the medals on a cord around his neck, as she had with his seven brothers and three sisters. Many years later, when Father Skelly undertook the job of raising funds to build St. Joseph's College at Princeton, N.J., he slipped one of the medals into each letter asking for contributions. Impressed by the unexpectedly generous response, he decided that a special mark of gratitude to the Virgin was in order. In 1915 he founded the Central Association of the Miraculous Medal.

Today Father Skelly's organization is said to have the second largest mail volume in Philadelphia--next to Sears, Roebuck. "Promoters" are recruited to sign up and send in the annual dues of 25-c- each for a "band" of at least eight members. Part of the funds are used to help poor boys studying for the priesthood; most go to promote prayer to "Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal." Some promoters have enrolled more than 1,000 members (total membership runs into "several million") and the names of such medal recipients range from Pope Pius XII to Mae West.

Most frequently chosen member of the association: Joseph Stalin, who is signed up at least a dozen times a month. So far, Father Skelly admits, no results are evident: "He's a pretty tough man to work on."

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