Marguerite-Marie Alacoque was a Visitation Sister at the small monastery of Paray-le-Monial in Burgundy. Between December 1673 and June 1675 she received four great apparitions of Christ in the convent chapel, each centred on the revelation of His Sacred Heart — represented in the apparitions as a heart of flesh, burning with flame, crowned with thorns, surmounted by a cross, with a wound from which water and blood flowed.
In each apparition Christ communicated specific desires: a devotion to His Heart wounded by human ingratitude; the practice of the First Friday of each month; a Holy Hour of reparation on Thursday nights; the institution of a liturgical feast of the Sacred Heart on the Friday after Corpus Christi. The devotion spread through her Jesuit director, St. Claude de la Colombière, who became its great propagator. The feast was instituted by Clement XIII in 1765 for Poland, by Pius IX for the universal Church in 1856, and elevated to the highest rank by Leo XIII in 1899. Margaret Mary was canonised in 1920; her tomb is at the basilica of Paray-le-Monial, where some 350,000 pilgrims come each year.