Apparition
Revelations of the Holy Face to Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre
Private revelation · Carmel of Tours, France, 1843
From 1843 Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre, a Carmelite of Tours, reported interior communications of our Lord asking for reparation to his Holy Face for blasphemy and the profanation of Sunday. Out of this grew the Work of Reparation and the devotion to the Holy Face, spread from Tours by the layman Venerable Léon Papin-Dupont and approved by the Church in the form of a confraternity.
Background
The Church's approval here is of the devotion, not a judgement on the revelations: Archbishop Charles Colet erected the Confraternity of the Holy Face at Tours in 1876, and Pope Leo XIII raised it to an archconfraternity and approved the scapular of the Holy Face in 1885. Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre is Venerable; her cause has not gone further. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who took the name Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face, drew deeply on this devotion. The particular promises attached to the devotion in popular literature are not part of the Church's teaching and should not be repeated as though they were.
Location
Carmel of Tours
Country
France
Approved status
Private revelation
Year of apparition
1843
Visionaries
Venerable Sister Marie de Saint-Pierre of the Holy Family
Message highlights
A call to reparation for blasphemy and for the profanation of the Lord's Day.
The veneration of the Holy Face of Christ, disfigured in the Passion, as the image of a love outraged and still offered.
Subject
christ
Decision year
1885
Content subtype
unapproved_apparition
Decision authority
Pope Leo XIII, who raised the Confraternity of the Holy Face at Tours to an archconfraternity