Margaret Mary's revelations were long resisted; her Jesuit confessor, Saint Claude de la Colombière, recognised their soundness and helped make them known. The Church's response has come through the liturgy and the magisterium rather than through a decree on the apparitions themselves: Pope Pius IX extended the feast of the Sacred Heart to the whole Church in 1856, Margaret Mary was canonised in 1920, Pope Leo XIII consecrated the human race to the Sacred Heart in 1899, and Pope Pius XII set out the doctrine of the devotion in the encyclical Haurietis Aquas (1956), teaching that its object is the love of the Incarnate Word, symbolised by his wounded human Heart. The devotion is entirely at the service of that mystery; the promises circulated in popular literature under the name of the twelve promises are not part of the Church's doctrinal teaching and should not be presented as such.

Monastery of the Visitation, Paray-le-Monial

France

Private revelation

1673

• Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque

• A revelation of the Heart of Jesus as the sign of his love for humanity, and a request for love in return.

• A call to reparation for indifference and ingratitude toward that love.

• The requests for Communion on the first Friday, the Holy Hour, and a feast in honour of the Sacred Heart.

christ

1856

unapproved_apparition

Pope Pius IX, who extended the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the universal Church