St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690) — the Visitation Sister of Paray-le-Monial to whom Christ appeared and revealed the Sacred Heart in the apparitions of 1673–75 — died at Paray-le-Monial on October 17, 1690.
Her body was first exhumed in 1830, 139 years after her death, in connection with the early stages of her cause for beatification. The body was found largely preserved — skin, hair, and features identifiable. A second formal recognition occurred at her beatification in 1864 and her canonisation in 1920. Her body is now displayed for veneration in a glass-fronted reliquary in the basilica of the Visitation monastery at Paray-le-Monial, directly beneath the chapel where she received the Sacred Heart visions. The basilica receives some 350,000 pilgrims per year, the largest concentration around the feast of the Sacred Heart.