Margaret Mary Alacoque

Life events

1. Born — 1647

   Margaret Mary Alacoque was born on 22 July 1647 in L'Hautecour, Burgundy, France, in what is now the commune of Verosvres, the fifth of seven children of Claude Alacoque, a notary, and Philiberte Lamyn.

2. Educated — 1656

   Following her father's death from pneumonia, she was sent to the Poor Clares convent school at Charolles, where she made her First Communion at age nine; she later contracted rheumatic fever that confined her to bed for four years.

3. Other — 1664

   After recovering from her four-year illness — which she attributed to a vow to the Virgin Mary — she added the name 'Mary' to her baptismal name; a subsequent vision of Christ appearing scourged and reproaching her after a Carnival ball confirmed her resolve to enter religious life.

4. Tonsured — 1671

   She entered the Visitation Convent at Paray-le-Monial on 25 May 1671 and was admitted to wearing the religious habit on 25 August 1671.

5. Other — 1672

   She was finally admitted to religious profession on 6 November 1672, after an unusually extended novitiate during which her vocation was tested by the community.

6. Other

   Between 27 December 1673 and June 1675, she reported a series of visions of Christ at Paray-le-Monial in which she was shown devotion to the Sacred Heart, including the First Fridays Devotion, the Holy Hour on Thursday nights, and a request for a feast dedicated to the Sacred Heart on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi.

7. Other — 1686

   By 1686, Claude de la Colombière, the community's confessor, had declared her visions genuine, and the Visitation Monastery at Paray-le-Monial began observing the Feast of the Sacred Heart privately; a chapel was built there two years later in honor of the Sacred Heart.

8. Died — 1690

   She died on 17 October 1690 at the Visitation Monastery in Paray-le-Monial. Her body now rests above the side altar in the Chapel of the Apparitions at that monastery.

Relationships

Documented claims

• She was beatified by Pope Pius IX on 18 September 1864 and canonized by Pope Benedict XV on 13 May 1920; the two miracles accepted for canonization were instantaneous cures of chronic transverse meningo-myelitis and right papillary cancer. (likely)
• When her tomb was opened in July 1830 — 140 years after her death — four doctors recorded that her brain had been preserved from corruption; the same incorruptibility was noted at a second opening in 1864, 174 years after death. (plausible)
• The 'Great Promise' associated with the First Fridays Devotion — that nine consecutive first-Friday communions would secure the grace of final penitence — was inserted by Benedict XV into the Bull of her Canonization in 1920. (likely)
• Her 1689 vision asked Louis XIV to consecrate France to the Sacred Heart; Louis XVI vowed to do so publicly if restored to power but was executed by guillotine in 1793 before fulfilling the vow. (plausible)
• Her short devotional work La Devotion au Sacré-Coeur de Jesus was published posthumously by J. Croiset in 1698, eight years after her death, and became widely read among Catholics. (likely)