Sacred Heart in France: Paray-le-Monial to Montmartre

Saint John Eudes, Saint Margaret Mary and Saint Claude La Colombière, the National Vow of Montmartre, and the encyclicals of Pius XII and Pope Francis on the Sacred Heart.

Francia Sacra · 6 min read

The devotion before Paray

Devotion to the Heart of Christ is older than the apparitions of Paray-le-Monial. In the thirteenth century the German mystics Mechtild of Magdeburg, Mechtilde of Hackeborn and Gertrude of Helfta cultivated it, and so did the Dominican Blessed Henry Suso in the fourteenth. Pius XII taught in Haurietis Aquas that the devotion rests on Scripture and the Fathers, and Pope Francis repeats his point that it cannot be said “to owe its origin to private revelations” (Dilexit Nos 83).

In France the first to give it a place in the liturgy was Saint John Eudes, a Norman priest who founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, the Eudists, in 1643. He wrote a Mass and Office of the Heart of Mary, first celebrated in 1648, and then of the Heart of Jesus. With the approval of the bishop of Rennes, the first feast of the Heart of Jesus was celebrated in the seminary at Rennes on August 31, 1670. Pope Francis notes that this was “the first time that such a feast was officially authorized in the Church” (Dilexit Nos 113). John Eudes died at Caen on August 19, 1680, and Pius XI canonized him in 1925. Caen is a stop on Via Incarnationis.

Saint Margaret Mary at Paray

Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque was born at L’Hautecour on July 22, 1647, entered the Visitation convent at Paray-le-Monial on May 25, 1671, and made her final vows in November 1672. Pope Francis places her apparitions “between the end of December 1673 and June of 1675” (Dilexit Nos 119).

The first came on December 27, 1673, the feast of Saint John. As she described it, Christ let her rest on his breast, as the beloved disciple had at the Last Supper, and revealed to her the secrets of his Heart. In 1674 she saw his Heart on a throne, in flames and surrounded by a crown of thorns, and he asked for Communion on the first Friday of each month and for an hour of prayer on the night between Thursday and Friday. These requests are the origin of the First Fridays and the Holy Hour. During the octave of Corpus Christi, between June 13 and 20, 1675, came the great apparition, in which Christ showed her his Heart and asked for a feast in its honor, with reparation for the offenses it receives, on the Friday after the octave.

Pope Francis quotes the words she reported: “This is the heart that so loved human beings that it has spared nothing, even to emptying and consuming itself” (Dilexit Nos 121). Margaret Mary died at Paray on October 17, 1690. Pius IX extended the feast of the Sacred Heart to the whole Church in 1856 and beatified her on September 18, 1864. Benedict XV canonized her on May 13, 1920.

Saint Claude La Colombière

Many in Margaret Mary’s community misunderstood her at first. In 1675 a young Jesuit, Saint Claude La Colombière, born on February 2, 1641, at Saint-Symphorien-d’Ozon, came to Paray as superior of the Jesuit residence and became her confessor. His writings and testimony helped establish the credibility of her visions. Pope Francis writes that “Saint Claude played a special role in developing the understanding of devotion to the Sacred Heart” (Dilexit Nos 125).

In 1676 he went to London as preacher to Mary of Modena, Duchess of York, and lived at St. James’s Palace. Falsely accused in Titus Oates’s so-called Popish Plot, he spent five weeks in prison and was sent back to France. He died at Paray on February 15, 1682, aged forty-one. Pius XI beatified him on June 16, 1929, and Saint John Paul II canonized him on May 31, 1992. His relics rest in the La Colombière chapel at Paray, consecrated in 1930 and decorated with mosaics in the Byzantine manner.

Kings, families and nations

In two letters of June 17 and August 25, 1689, Margaret Mary passed on requests she believed Christ addressed to Louis XIV: that the king consecrate himself to the Sacred Heart, that it be “painted on his standards and engraved on his arms,” and that a building be raised to hold a painting of the Heart, where king and court would consecrate themselves. Her superior forwarded them to Père de La Chaise, the royal confessor. Louis XIV never carried them out, and it is not known whether he ever received them.

A vow attributed to Louis XVI, made while he was held by the revolutionaries, promised that if he regained his freedom he would revoke the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, establish a feast of the Sacred Heart, build a church in its honor and renew the vow each year. Its text comes from a letter found years after his execution in January 1793. During the Vendée war, Catholic fighters wore the badge of the Sacred Heart on their clothing.

The consecration of the whole human race came from Rome. In the encyclical Annum Sacrum of May 25, 1899, Leo XIII set June 11, 1899, for the consecration of mankind to the Sacred Heart and gave a prayer for it. Families took up the practice through the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart in the home, an act of consecration before an image of the Heart set in a place of honor. Father Mateo Crawley-Boevey of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts launched it as a crusade in the Chapel of the Apparitions at Paray in August 1907, and Benedict XV approved it in a letter to Father Mateo. On June 11, 2026, the bishops of the United States consecrated their country to the Sacred Heart for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Montmartre and perpetual adoration

The basilica of the Sacred Heart on Montmartre in Paris grew from the National Vow. In December 1870, during the war with Prussia, two Parisians who had taken refuge in Poitiers, Alexandre Legentil and Hubert Rohault de Fleury, vowed to build a church to the Sacred Heart in Paris. Archbishop Joseph Hippolyte Guibert of Paris took up the project, and on July 24, 1873, the National Assembly declared it of public utility. Cardinal Guibert laid the first stone on June 16, 1875. The building was finished in 1914, but the war delayed its consecration until October 16, 1919.

Cardinal Guibert instituted perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament there on August 1, 1885, after adoration had begun in a temporary chapel in 1876. It has never stopped, day or night. Adorers stayed at prayer through the Allied bombing of the night of April 20 to 21, 1944, and during the lockdown of 2020 the Benedictine Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre and the chaplains kept it alone. Pilgrims, parishioners and local people have taken turns before the Blessed Sacrament from the beginning.

Two encyclicals

Pius XII published Haurietis Aquas on May 15, 1956, for the centennial of Pius IX’s extension of the feast. Its title comes from Isaiah 12:3, on drawing water with joy from the Savior’s fountain. Pius XII presents the Heart of Christ as the chief symbol of his love, divine and human, and calls the devotion “the most effective school of the love of God” (Haurietis Aquas 123). He names Margaret Mary its most distinguished promoter and states that her revelations “brought nothing new into Catholic doctrine” (97).

Pope Francis issued Dilexit Nos, his fourth encyclical, on October 24, 2024, during the celebrations for the 350th anniversary of the first apparition at Paray. Its subtitle is “on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.” It draws often on Pius XII, recalls Saint Francis de Sales, Saint John Eudes, Saint Margaret Mary and Saint Claude, and also Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Saint Charles de Foucauld, who consecrated himself to the Sacred Heart on June 6, 1889. It returns to the theme of reparation, quoting Pius XI.

Visiting Paray-le-Monial

The sanctuary of Paray-le-Monial is entrusted to the Emmanuel Community and is open to pilgrims all year. The Basilica of the Sacred Heart is a twelfth-century Romanesque church in the Cluniac style, raised to the rank of basilica by Pius IX in 1875. The Chapel of the Apparitions belongs to the Visitation monastery, where Margaret Mary saw Christ and where her relics are venerated. The La Colombière chapel, classified as a historic monument in 2022, holds Saint Claude’s relics, and the Hiéron is a museum of sacred art. Saint John Paul II prayed at Margaret Mary’s tomb in 1986.

Each summer the Emmanuel Community holds sessions for families and young people. Paray-le-Monial is a stop on Via Romanica, Via Gratiae and Via Sanctorum. The sanctuary posts its feast-day programs, session dates and Mass times on its website each year.

Our ways that go there

Holy places: Paray-le-Monial, Paris, Caen. Saints: Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Saint Claude La Colombière, Saint John Eudes, Saint Francis de Sales, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux.