Biography of St. Margaret Mary

St. Margaret Mary was a Visitation nun and the first person to begin the Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart.

The fifth-born child of a French family, Margaret discovered a gift for mystical prayer, which led her to enter the Visitation monastery.

From the time she was 20, Margaret experienced visions of Christ. In a series of revelations, Christ mourned the world’s indifference and charged her to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart.

Margaret responded with alacrity. She instituted the Feast of the Sacred Heart as well as a devotion known as the Nine Fridays. Devotion to the Sacred Heart flourished under her example, infusing Visitation convents far and wide.

Her emphasis on the Sacred Heart made her a natural for Visitation, along with her simple, grounded philosophy. “Accept with a good heart what Our Lord shows you to be applicable to yourself and do not bother about the rest,” she said.

Pope John Paul II has commended her extraordinary attentiveness. “Let us give thanks for the mystical experience of St. Margaret Mary,” he once said. “She had been given a remarkable calling, but in a hidden life, to know the power and beauty of the love of Christ.”