Saint John Eudes

John Eudes was born on November 14, 1601, on a farm near the village of Ri, close to Argentan in Normandy, and was baptized two days later in the church of Notre-Dame de la Visitation at Ri. His parents had made a vow to Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance at Les Tourailles after years without children, and after his birth they went back there to give thanks.

He entered the Oratory in Paris on March 25, 1623, and there came to know Pierre de Bérulle; he was ordained a priest on December 20, 1625. During the plagues of 1627 and 1631 he cared for the sick and the dying, and to avoid carrying the contagion to his brothers he lived for a time in a large cask in a field. He then gave himself to parish missions, 110 by one count and 117 by another, chiefly in Normandy, with others in Brittany, Burgundy and the Île-de-France, three of them in Paris and one at Versailles.

In 1641 he opened at Caen a refuge for women who wished to leave prostitution, the beginning of the Order of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge, which Pope Alexander VII approved on January 2, 1666. On March 25, 1643, after a night of prayer at the shrine of La Délivrande, he arrived in Caen with five companions and, leaving the Oratory, founded the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, the Eudists, for the training of priests in seminaries, among them the seminary of Rennes.

He composed liturgical offices of the Heart of Mary and of the Heart of Jesus and celebrated their first feasts: the Heart of Mary on February 8, 1648, and the Heart of Jesus, with the approval of the bishop of Rennes, at the seminary of Rennes on August 31, 1670. He died at Caen on August 19, 1680, in the house of the Mission, where he had lived for almost forty years.

Further reading: Sacred Heart in France: Paray-le-Monial to Montmartre.

Pope Leo XIII declared his virtues heroic in 1903 and gave him the title of author of the liturgical worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Heart of Mary. Pope Saint Pius X beatified him in Saint Peter’s Basilica on April 25, 1909, and named him father, doctor and apostle of the liturgical cult of the Sacred Hearts. Pope Pius XI canonized him on May 31, 1925, the same day as Saint John Mary Vianney. In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI called him a tireless apostle of devotion to the Sacred Hearts.

In 1810 his bones were brought to the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Gloriette in Caen, and on March 6, 1884, they were laid in a crypt beneath its south transept, the last translation the sources record. For the centennial of the canonization, a Mass was celebrated on May 31, 2025, on the square of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, and a relic of his body was offered for veneration in that church’s chapel of the crucifix until September 28. The Eudists have also marked out an “Extended Sanctuary,” a pilgrimage in four stages at Les Tourailles, Ri, La Délivrande and Caen.

He is shown in priest’s dress with the Sacred Heart, or with the united Hearts of Jesus and Mary that his congregation took as its emblem. A painted portrait of the saint owned by the city of Caen has been listed as a historic object since 1977, and a statue of him by Silvio Silva, placed in 1932, stands in the nave of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

• RiThe village near Argentan where he was born in 1601, with the church of Notre-Dame de la Visitation, where he was baptized.
• Les TouraillesThe shrine of Notre-Dame de la Recouvrance, where his parents made their vow and came back to give thanks for his birth.
• Douvres-la-DélivrandeThe shrine of Notre-Dame de la Délivrande, about nine miles from Caen, where he prayed through the night before founding the Eudists in 1643.
• Caen, Notre-Dame-de-la-GlorietteThe church whose crypt received his bones on March 6, 1884.
• Caen, the MissionThe oratory built on the site of the room where he lived for almost forty years and died in 1680.

On our ways: Caen.

• Via IncarnationisThe Way of the Incarnation, seven daysDay III, Paris to Caen
  Day IV, Caen to Montfort-sur-Meu