St. John Marie Vianney died at Ars on August 4, 1859, aged seventy-three. His body was buried in the parish church of Ars where he had spent forty-one years as parish priest and heard, in his final years, over 20,000 confessions annually.
On June 17, 1904, in preparation for beatification, the body was exhumed. Bishop Louis-Joseph Luçon of Belley found the flesh substantially preserved and the face still recognizable. The body was placed in a bronze-and-glass reliquary above the main altar of the shrine, and the heart was removed and enshrined separately in the Chapelle du Cœur adjacent to the basilica.
St. John Vianney was beatified in 1905 and canonized on May 31, 1925 by Pius XI; Pius XI proclaimed him Patron of Parish Priests worldwide. The heart-relic has been carried on multiple international tours — most recently the 2018–2019 U.S. tour by the Knights of Columbus, which drew reported crowds of over 200,000 across sixty American dioceses. Numerous documented cures of alcoholism, chronic pain, and marital discord have been reported at the venerations; the shrine at Ars alone processes thousands of formal healing depositions annually.