Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

The name of the feast and its rank

The Roman Missal promulgated by Saint Paul VI titles the Mass Sacratissimi Cordis Iesu, "of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus," and places it among the solemnities of the Lord that follow Pentecost, together with the Holy Trinity and the Blessed Sacrament^[17]. French-language liturgical books say more simply "Sacred Heart of Jesus"; the AELF calendar gives it the rank of "Solemnity of the Lord" and the color white^[18]. The Mass has its own proper texts: an opening antiphon drawn from Psalm 32, two collects to choose from, a preface devoted to the open Heart, two communion antiphons, and the Credo after the homily^[19].

This rank is the culmination of a two-century ascent. Granted at first as a privilege to a few Churches in 1765, the feast was prescribed to the whole Church in 1856 with the rank of "major double," raised to first class in 1889, endowed with an octave in 1928, then listed among the solemnities by the 1969 calendar (see below for the history of the feast)^{[20][21][22][23]}.

How is the date calculated?

The calendar fixes the solemnity on the "Friday after the second Sunday after Pentecost"^[24]. The simplest way is to count from Easter: Pentecost comes seven weeks after Easter, Holy Trinity Sunday one week later, Corpus Christi on the following Thursday — or the following Sunday, where it is not a holy day of obligation, as in France^[25][26] —, and the Sacred Heart on the Friday of the week after that, sixty-eight days after Easter^[27]. The feast can therefore fall between 29 May, when Easter is at its earliest on 22 March, and 2 July, when Easter is at its latest on 25 April^[28].

The following table gives, for the next ten years, the date of Easter, that of Pentecost, that of the Sacred Heart and that of the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the next day.

The dates for 2026 and 2027 are confirmed by the official liturgical calendar of French-speaking countries; the others follow from the same calculation^[29]. In 2028 and in 2030, the memorial of the Immaculate Heart falls on the day of another solemnity, the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist (24 June) and then Saints Peter and Paul (29 June)^[30].

Why a Friday?

Friday is the day of the Passion. The Gospel for Year B recalls this as it opens the account of the lance thrust: "Since it was the day of Preparation (that is, Friday), the bodies were not to remain on the cross on the sabbath" (Jn 19, 31); then "one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance; and at once there came out blood and water" (Jn 19, 34)^[31]. The feast of the pierced Heart thus falls on the weekday on which it was opened, like Good Friday and like every Friday of the year, which the Church keeps as a day of penance.

The choice of this particular Friday comes from Paray-le-Monial. In the revelation Saint Margaret Mary places "one day during its octave," that is, during the octave of Corpus Christi, Christ asked that "the first Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament be dedicated to a special feast in honor of my Heart, by receiving Communion on that day and making honorable reparation to it"^[32]. The feast was thus attached to the Eucharist: it came to close the eight days of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and to make reparation for the offenses done to Christ "during the time he has been exposed on the altars"^[33]. Saint John Eudes had chosen another date, 20 October^[34]; it was the Paray day that Rome retained in 1856, fixing the feast on the "feria VI post Octavam SSmi. Corporis," the Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament^[35].

The next day, the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

The Roman calendar places on the following Saturday the memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, "the Saturday after the second Sunday after Pentecost"^[36]. The two celebrations follow one another because their history is shared: the 1929 office calls Saint John Eudes "the author of the liturgical cult of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary"^[37], and Pius XII asked that the cult of the Heart of Jesus be closely joined to that of the "most loving heart of his heavenly mother"^[38]. This pairing does not place the two hearts on the same level: the Heart of Jesus is adored, while Mary's is venerated, leading to his (see What is the difference between adoration and veneration?).

When the Sacred Heart meets another solemnity

Since its date varies, the feast sometimes falls on the same day as a fixed-date solemnity. On Friday 24 June 2022, it fell on the day of the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist: the French-language liturgical calendar kept the Sacred Heart on the Friday and celebrated Saint John the Baptist the day before, on Thursday 23 June, with his vigil Mass in the evening and his Mass of the day^[39]. The same encounter with Saint John the Baptist will recur on 24 June 2033 and 24 June 2044; the one with Saints Peter and Paul, on 29 June 2057 and 29 June 2068^[40].

The feast did not come down from Rome to the dioceses: it rose from seminaries, monasteries and bishops toward Rome, which received it slowly, weighing each step. Nearly a century separates the first diocesan feast, at Rennes in 1670, from the first pontifical concession, in 1765; it then took ninety-one years for Pius IX to prescribe it to the whole Church^[41][42][43]. Saint Paul VI nevertheless saw in this a remarkable swiftness: the liturgical feast had entered into use "barely seventy-five years after the death of the humble Visitandine," Saint Margaret Mary, who died in 1690^[44].

The feast in a few dates

Before the feast: the open Heart and medieval piety

The cult did not begin in the seventeenth century. From the Gospel of Saint John onward, the opened side of Christ is a source: "there came out blood and water" (Jn 19:34). The Fathers saw in it the birth of the Church and of the sacraments, and the Middle Ages learned to pass through the wound to reach the Heart. The office composed in 1929 for the feast sums up this journey:

"From the Middle Ages onward, when the faithful began to be touched by a more tender piety toward the most holy humanity of the Saviour, contemplative souls were accustomed to enter through this wound into the Heart itself, wounded by love for men." — Office of the Sacred Heart, second nocturn, lesson IV, approved in 1929^[62]

Pius XII named among these forerunners Saint Bonaventure, Saint Albert the Great, Saint Gertrude, and Saint Catherine of Siena^[63]. Saint Bonaventure remains present in the feast itself: it is his meditation from The Tree of Life that the Church still reads today at the Office of Readings of the solemnity (see below). The visions of Saint Gertrude of Helfta and Saint Mechtilde of Hackeborn in the thirteenth century, and the whole prehistory of the devotion, are presented in the article The Infinite Love of God in the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy. During those centuries, the Heart of Jesus was prayed to, contemplated, and sung; it did not yet have a day of its own in the calendar.

Saint John Eudes and the first feast (1670)

The first feast day came from Normandy and Brittany. A preacher of missions and founder of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary, Saint John Eudes (1601–1680) had long honoured the Heart of Mary, and gradually, in his devotion, the Heart of Jesus took a distinct place^[64]. Pope Francis recalled the decisive step:

"After leading a very fervent mission at Rennes with his missionaries, he succeeded in having the celebration of the feast of the Adorable Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ approved by the bishop of that diocese. It was the first time that this feast had been officially authorized in the Church." — Francis, encyclical Dilexit nos, no. 113, 24 October 2024^[65]

The first solemn celebration took place at the major seminary of Rennes on 31 August 1670; Coutances followed on 20 October, the date to which the feast of the Eudist communities henceforth remained attached^[66]. Father Eudes had composed a proper office and Mass for it, and several bishops of the West approved them for their dioceses within the space of eighteen and a half months, as shown by the following record of episcopal approvals.

These six approvals, recorded by the Jesuit historian Nicolaus Nilles from the episcopal acts, predate by a few years the great apparitions of Paray-le-Monial, which began at the end of 1673^[67][68]. That is why the 1929 office gives Saint John Eudes the title of "author of the liturgical cult of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary"^[69], and why Pius XII could stress that the feast does not rest primarily on a private revelation (see below). The Eudist feast nevertheless remained a local feast, on a fixed date, without the link with the Eucharist that Paray was to give it.

In May 2025, for the centenary of the canonization of Saint John Eudes together with those of the holy Curé of Ars and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Leo XIV proposed him to the bishops of France as a master to be made known, relaying the testament of Francis on the Sacred Heart: "A river that never runs dry, that never passes away, that offers itself ever anew to all who wish to love, continues to flow from the wound in Christ's side. Only his love will make possible a new humanity" (Dilexit nos, no. 219)^[70]:

"Is not Saint John Eudes the first to have celebrated the liturgical cult of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary […]" — Leo XIV, message to the bishops of France, 28 May 2025^[71]

Paray-le-Monial: the request for a feast (1675)

At the Visitation of Paray-le-Monial, in Burgundy, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647–1690) had been receiving since the end of 1673 graces which she later recorded in her autobiography^[72]. The revelation that grounds the date of the feast took place during the octave of Corpus Christi in 1675, "probably on 16 June" according to the Jesuit theologian Jean Bainvel^[73]. She recounts it as follows:

"Once, as I was before the Blessed Sacrament, one day within its octave, I received from my God extraordinary graces of His love, and I felt moved by the desire to make some return, and to render Him love for love […]. Then, uncovering to me His divine Heart: 'Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, to show them its love; and in return I receive from most of them only ingratitude, by their irreverences and sacrileges, and by the coldness and contempt they show me in this Sacrament of love. […] That is why I ask you that the first Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament be dedicated to a special feast to honour my Heart, by receiving Communion on that day, and by making reparation of honour to it by an act of solemn reparation, to make amends for the indignities it has received during the time it has been exposed on the altars. I promise you also that my Heart will open wide to pour out abundantly the influences of its divine love upon those who render it this honour, and who bring it about that it be rendered to it.'" — Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Autobiography, § 92^[74]

Three elements of the present feast are already there: the day (the Friday following the octave of the Blessed Sacrament), Communion, and reparation. Christ added that she was to turn to the "servant" He had sent her: the Jesuit Saint Claude La Colombière, who ordered her to put the account in writing and himself copied it into the journal of his retreat made at London in 1677^[75][76]. The spirituality of these revelations — Christ's other words, the promises, the Holy Hour, the First Fridays — is developed in The Infinite Love of God in the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy.

The first feasts of Paray (1685–1686)

The request at first had no effect. Ten years later, as mistress of novices, Margaret Mary seized an opportunity: the feast of Saint Margaret, on 20 July 1685, fell on a Friday^[77].

"I asked our novice sisters, who were then in my care, that all the little honours they intended to pay me for my feast day they should pay instead to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This they did wholeheartedly, making a small altar on which they placed a little paper image sketched with a pen." — Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Autobiography, § 94^[78]

The initiative earned her the accusation "of wanting to introduce a new devotion," and she was forbidden to display images of the Sacred Heart; she reports that she then heard: "Fear nothing, I shall reign despite my enemies and all those who wish to oppose it"^[79]. The following year, the whole community changed its attitude: Sister des Escures inaugurated the cult "on the very day designated by Our Lord, that is, the Friday after the octave of the Blessed Sacrament, 21 June 1686"^[80]. It was the first celebration of the Sacred Heart on the date that the universal Church would retain.

Rome hesitates: the Mass of the Five Wounds (1697)

The monasteries of the Visitation, where the devotion was spreading, soon asked Rome for a proper Mass. In 1697, the petition was carried by an exiled queen, Mary Beatrice of Este, wife of James II of England, then a refugee at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; Cardinal de Janson acted as its relator^[81]. The Promoter of the Faith, Prosper Bottini, objected to the novelty of such a feast, as contrary to ecclesiastical discipline. The Congregation of Rites then chose a middle way: for the day which the Visitation dedicated to the Heart of Jesus, it granted the already existing Mass of the Five Wounds, and not a new Mass^[82]. According to Jean Bainvel, the Holy See had granted indulgences to confraternities of the Sacred Heart as early as 1693, but it still refused a feast common to all, with its own Mass and office^[83].

Marseilles in the plague (1720–1722)

It was an epidemic that brought the cult out of the cloisters. In 1720, plague was ravaging Marseilles. On 22 October, the bishop, Bishop Henri-François-Xavier de Belsunce, instituted by mandement a feast of the Sacred Heart throughout his diocese:

"We have ordained and we do ordain throughout our diocese a feast day in honour of the most sacred Heart of Jesus, a feast which shall henceforth be celebrated each year on the Friday following the octave of the most Blessed Sacrament, the day on which this same feast is already observed in some other dioceses of this kingdom." — Bishop de Belsunce, Bishop of Marseilles, mandement of 22 October 1720, after the Latin version published by N. Nilles (Ignispedia translation)^[84]

On 1 November 1720, the city and the diocese were publicly consecrated to the Sacred Heart; the bishop later attested that the plague had receded from that day onward^[85]. On 28 May 1722, as the contagion threatened again, the aldermen of Marseilles — Jean-Pierre Moustier, Balthazar Dieudé, Pierre Remuzat, and Jean-Baptiste Saint-Michel — made a perpetual vow: each year, on the feast day, to attend Mass at the first monastery of the Visitation, to receive Communion there, and to offer a four-pound candle in reparation for the faults committed in the city; they pronounced it at the cathedral on Thursday 4 June 1722, the day of Corpus Christi^[86]. Aix, Arles, Carpentras, and Avignon followed between 1720 and 1722^[87]. For Jean Bainvel, the plague of Marseilles doubtless offered the first occasion for a solemn consecration and a public cult outside religious communities^[88].

The refusals of 1727 and 1729: the objections of Prosper Lambertini

A new petition was presented to Rome in the mid-1720s by the King of Poland Augustus II, the bishops of Kraków and Marseilles, and the Visitandines, then supported in 1727 by the King of Spain Philip V^[89]. The Jesuit Joseph de Gallifet, author of a Latin treatise on the cult of the Sacred Heart, defended the cause. The Promoter of the Faith was then Prosper Lambertini, the future Pope Benedict XIV. He raised two objections: the revelation made to Margaret Mary had been neither juridically examined nor confirmed by a miracle; and the petitioners based their request on an uncertain thesis. He himself reported it later:

"The petitioners took it as certain that the heart is, as they say, the sensible principle of all virtues and all affections, and as it were the centre of all joys and all inward sorrows; but this involves a philosophical question, which the Church has prudently refrained and refrains from deciding. That is why I respectfully suggested that the request should not be granted." — Prosper Lambertini (Benedict XIV), De servorum Dei beatificatione, as reported by N. Nilles^[90]

The Congregation answered "Non proposita" on 12 July 1727 — a formula inviting the petitioners to withdraw —, then simply "Negative" on 30 July 1729^[91]. This refusal did not concern Christ's love or the legitimacy of the devotion: it targeted a fragile philosophical foundation. Saint Alphonsus Liguori understood it in this sense and drew hope from it (see below, "The heart is not the seat of the sentiments").

1765: Clement XIII grants the feast to Poland and Rome

The cause succeeded under Clement XIII. The bishops of the Kingdom of Poland and the archconfraternity of the Sacred Heart erected at Rome asked for a proper office and Mass. Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Albani reported the cause, the Promoter of the Faith Cajetan Forti was heard, and the Congregation of Rites reversed its 1729 decision^[92]. Its decree, whose tenor the pope approved on 6 February 1765, gives the reasons for this decision:

"Knowing that the cult of the Heart of Jesus is already widespread in almost every part of the Catholic world, with the favour of their bishops, and often honoured by the Apostolic See with thousands of briefs of indulgences granted to countless confraternities erected under the title of the Heart of Jesus, and understanding that by the celebration of this Mass and office nothing else is done than to extend a cult already established and to renew symbolically the memory of that divine love by which the Only-begotten Son of God took human nature and, having become obedient unto death, said that He gave Himself to men as an example as meek and humble of heart…" — Congregation of Rites, decree for Poland, approved by Clement XIII on 6 February 1765^[93]

The Congregation specified that in granting the feast it decided nothing concerning the opinions of philosophers: the 1729 objection was thus removed without being contradicted^[94]. The text of Pius XII is clearer still: the Holy See approved the liturgical feast before approving the writings of Saint Margaret Mary, "without taking exact account of any private revelation from God, but by graciously acceding to the requests of the faithful"^[95]. The session of the Congregation is dated 26 January 1765 in the acts published by Nilles, and 25 January in Pius XII's encyclical; the pontifical approval of 6 February is attested by both^[96][97].

The office was approved on 11 May 1765, with the Mass Miserebitur ("He will have pity")^[98]. That same year, at the request of the queen — Marie Leszczyńska, wife of Louis XV —, the feast was received "almost officially" by the episcopate of France^[99]; Saint Paul VI recalled that it was welcomed by the king, the bishops, and the faithful of Poland, by the Visitandines, by the city of Rome, by the bishops and the queen of France, and by the Jesuits^[100].

1794: Pius VI defends the cult against the Synod of Pistoia

Jansenism, which distrusted a piety deemed too affective, attacked the devotion. A synod assembled at Pistoia, in Tuscany, ranked it among new and dangerous devotions, and accused those who honoured it of adoring flesh separated from the divinity. On 28 August 1794, Pius VI condemned these propositions in the constitution Auctorem fidei: the doctrine which rejects devotion to the most sacred Heart of Jesus, "understood as that devotion such as it has been approved by the Apostolic See," is declared "false, rash, pernicious"^[101]. The theological reason can be summed up in one sentence:

"The faithful adore the Heart of Jesus insofar as it is the Heart of Jesus, that is, the heart of the person of the Word, to whom it is inseparably united." — Pius VI, constitution Auctorem fidei, 28 August 1794: doctrine opposed to proposition 63 of the Synod of Pistoia^[102]

One does not therefore adore an organ for its own sake: one adores the person of the Son of God, to whom this heart belongs, just as his body laid in the tomb during the three days of his death was adored, without being separated from the divinity^[103]. This doctrinal clarification, directed against the objections of Jansenism, keeps the feast free of any suspicion of idolatry; Pius XII would take it up again in 1956 (see below, "What does the solemnity of the Sacred Heart celebrate?").

1856: Pius IX extends the feast to the whole Church

In 1856, the bishops of France, gathered in Paris around Cardinal Patrizi, prefect of the Congregation of Rites, then the pope's legate in France, asked that the feast be extended to the entire Church^[104]. The decree Urbis et Orbis of 23 August 1856 notes that, since the concession of Clement XIII, almost no diocese had failed to request the privilege of the feast, and Pius IX prescribed it everywhere at the rank of double major, on the Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi, with the 1765 office and the Mass Miserebitur^[105]. The decree gives its motive:

"Desiring to offer the faithful new encouragements to love and to love in return the wounded Heart of Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood…" — Congregation of Rites, decree Urbis et Orbis, 23 August 1856^[106]

The 1929 office describes what followed with an image that Pius XII took up in 1956: "From that time on, the worship of the Sacred Heart, like an overflowing river, sweeping away every obstacle, spread throughout the whole world"^[107][108].

Leo XIII: first class (1889) and the consecration of the human race (1899)

Leo XIII raised the feast to the rank of first class by a decree of 28 June 1889^[109]. Ten years later, by the encyclical Annum sacrum of 25 May 1899, he decided to consecrate the whole human race to the Sacred Heart. He prescribed public prayers on 9, 10 and 11 June in the principal church of each city, with the litanies of the Sacred Heart approved by his authority, and the recitation of the act of consecration on the last day^[110]. The first of these three days, Friday 9 June 1899, was the very day of the feast^[111]. The pope explained why a consecration befitted the Heart of Christ:

"Since there is in the Sacred Heart a symbol and a sensible image of the infinite love of Jesus Christ, which moves us to love one another, it is just and fitting that we consecrate ourselves to his most Sacred Heart — an act which is nothing other than an offering and a pledge to Jesus Christ, since every honour, all veneration and all love shown to this divine Heart are really and truly shown to Christ himself." — Leo XIII, encyclical Annum sacrum, no. 8, 25 May 1899^[112]

Pius XI: the octave and the act of reparation (1928-1929)

By the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor of 8 May 1928, Pius XI gave the feast its highest rank before the reform of the calendar. He raised it to the rank of double of the first class with an octave and ordered that the same act of reparation be recited each year, in every church in the world:

"We decree and order that each year, on the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus — which We have had raised on this occasion to the rank of double of the first class with an octave — in all churches throughout the world, one and the same prayer of expiation or protestation be solemnly recited, in the same terms, according to the model attached to this letter, so that all our faults may be bewailed and the violated rights of Christ, supreme King and most loving Lord, may be repaired." — Pius XI, encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, no. 20, 8 May 1928^[113]

On 29 January 1929, the pope approved an entirely new office and Mass, composed by a special commission; the feast received a privileged octave of the third order, was declared a primary feast and ranked with holy days of obligation^[114]. The new Mass opened with the verse of Psalm 32 which the Missal still retains today, and which the Liturgy of the Hours renders thus: "The plans of his heart endure from age to age" (Ps 32:11)^{[115][116][117]}. Pius XI also recalled that the consecration of the human race had been "as it were confirmed" by the solemnity of Christ the King, which he had instituted by the encyclical Quas primas^[118].

From the 1956 centenary to the reform of the calendar

The 1955 reform of the rubrics simplified the calendar: the Congregation of Rites retained only the octaves of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, and the days of "the suppressed octave of the Sacred Heart of Jesus" became ordinary days again^[119]. The following year, for the centenary of the decree of Pius IX, Pius XII published the encyclical Haurietis aquas (15 May 1956), which remains the great doctrinal synthesis of the magisterium on the Sacred Heart; in it he asked that this centenary be marked everywhere by public acts of adoration, thanksgiving and reparation^[120][121].

In 1965, for the second centenary of the 1765 concession, Saint Paul VI addressed the bishops of the world with the apostolic letter Investigabiles divitias Christi. In it he noted with sadness that devotion to the Sacred Heart had "grown somewhat weaker among some", and asked that the Heart of Jesus be honoured above all by a more intense participation in the sacrament of the altar, since his "greatest gift is precisely the Eucharist"^[122]. The 1969 Roman calendar confirmed the feast at the highest rank, that of solemnities of the Lord, on the Friday following the second Sunday after Pentecost^[123].

The following table summarises the stages that fixed the rank of the feast in the calendar of the Latin Church.

In two centuries, a feast born of a mission in Brittany and of a request received in a Burgundian monastery thus became one of the solemnities of the Lord of the universal Church^[124][125].

The Mass of the solemnity

The present Mass takes up the introit composed in 1929: "The plans of his heart endure from age to age: he delivers their soul from death, he keeps them alive in days of famine" (Ps 32:11, 19)^[126][127]. The psalm speaks of God; the liturgy applies it to the Heart of Christ, whose love does not change with the generations. The collect, which the Liturgy of the Hours takes up at each office of the day, asks that this love be received as a source:

"Lord our Father, as we venerate the Heart of your beloved Son, we proclaim the wonders of your love for us; grant that we may receive from this divine source a more abundant grace." — Collect of the solemnity, liturgical translation of the AELF^[128][129]

The Missal offers a second collect, which gives the feast its note of reparation: "O God, who in the Heart of your Son, wounded by our sins, are pleased to lavish upon us with mercy the infinite treasures of your love, grant us, as we offer him the fervent homage of our devotion, to present to him also a fitting reparation"^[130]. The prayer over the offerings asks the Father to look upon "the unspeakable love of the Heart of your beloved Son", so that the offering may become "the expiation of our faults"^[131]. After the homily, the Credo is said^[132].

The theological heart of the Mass is its preface. It links in a single sentence the cross, the open side, the sacraments and the Heart of the Saviour:

"Raised upon the cross in wondrous love, he gave himself up for us; from his pierced side, he poured forth blood and water from which flow the sacraments of the Church, so that all, drawn to the open Heart of the Saviour, may draw joyfully and unceasingly from the springs of salvation." — Preface of the solemnity of the Sacred Heart, Missale Romanum (1970), Ignispedia translation^[133]

The closing words of the preface take up Isaiah: "With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation" (Is 12:3) — the very verse that gave its title to the encyclical of Pius XII, Haurietis aquas^[134]. For communion, the Missal offers two antiphons: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink; whoever believes in me, rivers of living water will flow from within him" (Jn 7:37-38), or "One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out" (Jn 19:34)^[135]. The prayer after communion draws the practical consequence of the feast: that the "sacrament of charity" may make us burn with holy love, so that, ever drawn to the Son, "we may learn to recognise him in our brothers"^[136].

The pre-1970 Mass

The Mass retained by Saint Paul VI is not the first. The 1856 decree imposed on the whole Church the Mass Miserebitur, approved in 1765 with the Polish office; its name comes from its first Latin word, "He will have mercy"^[137]. In 1929, Pius XI replaced it with a new Mass, Cogitationes Cordis eius, and with a complete office for the feast and for each day of its octave^[138]. The 1962 Missal also gives it as the votive Mass of the Sacred Heart, with the epistle of Saint Paul to the Ephesians (Eph 3:8-19) and the Gospel of the lance thrust (Jn 19:31-37): two readings which the present lectionary has kept for Year B^[139][140]. The very title of Paul VI's letter for the 1765 bicentenary, Investigabiles divitias Christi, "the unsearchable riches of Christ", is taken from this epistle (Eph 3:8)^[141].

The readings of the Mass over three years

Since the liturgical reform, the Mass of the solemnity has three series of readings, one for each year of the Sunday cycle. The following table brings them together, based on the AELF lectionary.

Each year shows a different face of the same love: freely given election and the gentleness of Christ in A, the stricken heart of God and the open side in B, the shepherd seeking his sheep in C^[142].

Year A: "I am gentle and humble of heart"

Deuteronomy recalls to Israel the reason for its election: "It was for love of you […] that the Lord brought you out by the strength of his hand" (Dt 7:8). Saint John gives the key to the whole feast: "In this is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us" (1 Jn 4:10). The Gospel is the only passage in which Jesus speaks of his own heart:

"Come to me, all you who labour under the weight of your burden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, become my disciples, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your soul." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 11:28-29, liturgical translation of the AELF^[143]

It is this word that the 1765 decree already quoted: the Son of God gave himself to men as an example as "gentle and humble of heart"^[144]. On 12 June 2026, Leo XIV commented on these same readings: "There is life when one gives life"; and he quoted the confession of faith from Saint John's letter, "We have come to know the love that God has for us, and we have believed in it" (1 Jn 4:16)^[145].

Year B: "My heart turns against me"

The first reading is one of the summits of the Old Testament on the tenderness of God. There the Lord speaks like a father who taught his child to walk, who lifted him "to his cheek" and bent down to feed him; faced with Israel's unfaithfulness, he renounces punishment:

"No! My heart turns against me; at the same time, my inmost being trembles. I will not act according to the fierceness of my anger, I will no longer destroy Israel, for I am God, and not man: in your midst I am the Holy God, and I do not come to exterminate." — Book of Hosea 11:8-9, liturgical translation of the AELF^[146]

The canticle of Isaiah (Is 12) proclaims the "wells of salvation". Saint Paul assures the Ephesians that they will know "what surpasses all knowledge: the love of Christ" (Eph 3:19), and the Gospel recounts the lance thrust and the testimony of the one who saw: "They shall look on him whom they have pierced" (Jn 19:37)^[147].

Year C: the sheep found again

Ezekiel announces that God himself will seek his scattered sheep: "I myself will pasture my flock, and I myself will give it rest" (Ezek 34:15). Saint Paul draws from it the decisive proof: "The proof that God loves us is that Christ died for us while we were still sinners" (Rom 5:8). The Gospel of the lost sheep ends with the shepherd's joy: "Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep, the one that was lost!" (Lk 15:6)^[148]. On 27 June 2025, Leo XIV saw in it "an invitation to live pastoral charity with the same great heart as the Father", so that no one may be lost^[149].

The Liturgy of the Hours of the Sacred Heart

The Office of the day is entirely directed toward the open side. At the Office of Readings, after the passage from the Epistle to the Romans on the love from which nothing can separate us (Rom 8:28-39), the Church reads a page from Saint Bonaventure taken from The Tree of Life^[150]:

"So that the Church might come forth from the side of Christ asleep on the Cross, and so that the word of Scripture might be fulfilled: They shall look on him whom they have pierced, divine wisdom willed that a soldier's lance should open and pierce that side. There came out blood and water, and it was the price of our salvation flowing forth. Sprung from its source, that is, from the innermost depths of the Heart of Christ, it gives the sacraments of the Church the power to confer the life of grace." — Saint Bonaventure, The Tree of Life, reading for the Office of the Sacred Heart, liturgical translation by AELF^[151]

The responsory that follows sings: "I saw the spring become an immense river, alleluia!"^[152]. The French hymns of the day take up the same images — "His humbled glory, his pierced heart, show the way" at the Office of Readings, "the blood sprung from the Heart of Jesus Christ, life of the baptized" at Vespers — and at Lauds the intercessions take up Saint John's words: "Let us look on him whom we have pierced"^[153]. At Vespers, the antiphon of the Magnificat sums up the feast in one sentence: "The Lord carries us in his arms, he holds us to his heart, he remembers his love, alleluia"^[154].

The Act of Reparation

Since Pius XI, the feast has had its own act: the prayer of reparation which he had joined to his 1928 encyclical and which he asked to be recited every year on that day in all churches^[155]. It begins thus:

"Most sweet Jesus, whose love poured out upon men is repaid with so much ingratitude, with so much forgetfulness, negligence and contempt, here we are prostrate before your altars: we wish to make amends by a special homage for such guilty indifference and for the outrages of which your most loving Heart is everywhere the object." — Pius XI, act of reparation joined to the encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, 1928, Ignispedia translation^[156]

The prayer does not stop at faults: it ends with an offering and a request for perseverance, "through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary the Reparatrix," so that all may one day reach the homeland where Christ reigns with the Father and the Spirit^[157]. It answers the request received at Paray — to make to the Heart of Jesus "reparation of honour" on the day of his feast^[158] — and the meaning Pius XI gave to reparation (see below, "A feast of reparation"). The articles How to grow in reparation and What the saints say about reparation continue this point.

A Day of Prayer for Priests

The Friday of the Sacred Heart has also become, in the words of Benedict XVI, the "day traditionally devoted to prayer for the sanctification of priests." It was on that day, 19 June 2009, that he opened a "Year for Priests" for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the death of the holy curé of Ars, whose famous saying he quoted^[159]:

"The Priesthood is the love of the heart of Jesus." — Saint Jean-Marie Vianney, curé of Ars, quoted by Benedict XVI, letter of 16 June 2009^[160]

On 27 June 2025, on the solemnity, Leo XIV celebrated the Mass for the Jubilee of Priests and conferred priestly ordination; he opened his homily with these words: "Today, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Day for the Sanctification of Priests, we joyfully celebrate this Eucharist on the occasion of the Jubilee of Priests"^[161]. He immediately gave its meaning:

"To speak of the Heart of Christ in this context is to speak of the whole mystery of the incarnation, of the death and resurrection of the Lord, which has been entrusted to us in a particular way so that we may make it present in the world." — Leo XIV, homily of the Mass with priestly ordinations, 27 June 2025^[162]

The feast does not celebrate an event in the life of Christ, as Christmas or the Ascension do: it contemplates what explains them all, the love with which he lived, suffered and gave his life. The Catechism puts it thus concerning the prayer of the Church: it "venerates and honours the Heart of Jesus, as it invokes his most holy name. It adores the incarnate Word and his Heart which, out of love for men, allowed itself to be pierced by our sins"^[163].

The Love of the Word Made Flesh, Signified by His Heart

The starting point is the Incarnation. The Son of God took a complete human nature, with a true body and a true heart; the Catechism draws the consequence: "He loved us all with a human heart"^[164]. Pius XII gave two reasons why the Church renders to the Heart of the Redeemer the worship of adoration due to God alone. The first is that this Heart, "the noblest part of his human nature, is hypostatically united to the person of the divine Word": it is adored as the very person of the incarnate Son of God is adored. The second is that it is, more than any other member of his body, "a natural sign or symbol of his immense charity toward the human race"^[165].

This symbol points to a threefold love: the divine love which the Son shares with the Father and the Spirit, the spiritual love of his human soul, and the sensible love of his body, which truly experienced affection, compassion and suffering^[166]. Pius XII specified the exact scope of this worship:

"The faithful, in honouring the Heart of Jesus, adore with the Church a sign and as it were a memorial of the divine love." — Pius XII, encyclical Haurietis aquas, 15 May 1956 (DS 3925)^[167]

He added that the truth of this symbol "rests entirely upon the fundamental truth of the hypostatic union"^[168]. The solemnity therefore honours neither a feeling nor a pious image: it adores God made man, in what most visibly manifests in him that he loved us. It is the same reason Leo XIII gave for consecration: every honour rendered to this Heart "is really and truly rendered to Christ himself"^[169].

A Feast of the Redemption

Because it falls on a Friday and its Gospel in Year B is that of the lance thrust, the feast continues the contemplation of Good Friday. Its texts do not look upon the cross as a failure, but as a source: the preface sees springing from the pierced side "the sacraments of the Church," and Saint Bonaventure, at the Office of Readings, sees the Church coming forth from the side of Christ "asleep on the Cross"^[170][171]. The wound is not closed: the Heart remains open, and the feast invites us to enter it. That is the meaning of the prayer after Communion, which asks to be "unceasingly drawn" toward the Son^[172].

A Eucharistic Feast

The very date of the feast binds it to the Eucharist. It closes, on the Friday, the week following Corpus Christi, and the request received at Paray aimed precisely at the offences done to Christ "in this Sacrament of love": on that day, one was to receive Communion and make reparation for the indignities he had received "during the time he was exposed upon the altars"^[173]. Saint Paul VI drew from this his principal recommendation for the 1765 bicentenary: to honour the Heart of Jesus by a more intense participation in the sacrament of the altar, since his "greatest gift is precisely the Eucharist," and because this devotion "consists essentially in adoration and in reparation" and "is founded above all upon the august mystery of the Eucharist"^[174]. The Mass of the day, Communion, Eucharistic adoration and prayer before the Blessed Sacrament are thus at the centre of the feast (see The Eucharist).

A Feast of Reparation: Returning Love for Love

Reparation is the most characteristic word of the feast, and the easiest to misunderstand. For Pius XI, it is not first a debt of fear, but a way of loving: it completes the union with Christ which consecration begins.

"Just as consecration proclaims and strengthens union with Christ, so expiation begins this same union by effacing faults, perfects it by making us share in the sufferings of Christ, and consummates it by offering victims for our brethren. Such was the design of merciful Jesus when he willed to show us his Heart, bearing the marks of his Passion and displaying the flames of his love: that, seeing on the one hand the infinite malice of sin and admiring on the other the infinite charity of the Redeemer, we might hate sin more keenly and return love for love more ardently." — Pius XI, encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor, no. 11, 8 May 1928^[175]

The expression "returning love for love" is that of Saint Margaret Mary herself: it was in wishing to "return love for love" that she received the request for the feast^[176]. Christ added a promise, which gives the feast its true tone: "my Heart will expand to pour out abundantly the influences of its divine love upon those who render it this honour"^[177]. Reparation does not shut us up in guilt: it answers a love which complains of not being loved, and it is made with confidence. The articles How to grow in reparation and The frequent errors concerning reparation develop the practice.

Receiving Communion, Adoring, Making Reparation

The practices proper to the day all flow from the request of Paray: Communion, reparation, adoration. Pius XI recalled that the Church had approved and enriched with many graces "reparatory Communion" and the "Holy Hour," a full hour of prayer of reparation^[178]. These devotions are also practised throughout the year, notably on the first Fridays of the month; their history and the promises attached to them are presented in The Infinite Love of God in the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy and in the article devoted to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque.

Consecrations to the Sacred Heart

The feast has often been the day chosen to consecrate oneself to the Sacred Heart, that is, to give oneself to him and to place oneself under his protection. Marseille had done so in 1720, and its aldermen had pledged to return each year, on the day of the feast, to the Visitation monastery (see above)^[179]. The consecration of the human race willed by Leo XIII in 1899 gave these acts a universal dimension; the Office composed in 1929 measured its fruits:

"This consecration, accomplished with solemn rite in all the churches of the Catholic world, brought to this devotion an immense increase, and led to it not only peoples, but also families, who in countless numbers devote themselves to the divine Heart and submit themselves to his kingly reign." — Office of the Sacred Heart, second nocturne, Lesson VI, approved in 1929^[180]

These consecrations are not magic formulas: Leo XIII defined them as an offering and a commitment toward Jesus Christ himself^[181]. They gave Catholic piety two of its great places, the shrine of Paray-le-Monial, where Saint Paul VI saw "the pious crowds of pilgrims streaming in from all sides"^[182], and the basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre, in Paris.

Since the first petition of 1697, the feast has met serious objections, from canonists, theologians and philosophers. Here they are in their strongest form, each followed by its answer.

Objection 1 — "A Sentimental Devotion, Unworthy of a Solemnity of the Church"

The objection. The image of a radiant heart evokes a tender emotion rather than a mystery of faith. The great feasts of the Church celebrate events — the birth of Christ, his death, his resurrection — or truths — the Trinity, the Eucharist; devoting a solemnity to a heart seems to put feeling before dogma, and a sometimes mawkish iconography has reinforced this suspicion. Saint Paul VI himself noted in 1965 that this worship had "somewhat weakened among some"^[183].

Answer. The object of the feast is not an emotion, but the love of the incarnate Word in all its breadth: the divine love of the Son, the love of his human soul and the sensible love of his body, which Pius XII presented as a threefold love signified by the Heart^[184]. The readings of the solemnity show it: they speak of the election of Israel, of the tenderness of God in Hosea, of Christ "gentle and humble of heart," of the pierced side and of the shepherd who seeks his sheep^[185]. Leo XIV said it in 2025: "to speak of the Heart of Christ […], is to speak of the whole mystery of the incarnation, of the death and resurrection of the Lord"^[186]. Paul VI, in the same letter in which he lamented the decline of the worship, gave its soberest definition: this devotion "consists essentially in adoration and in reparation" and "is founded above all upon the august mystery of the Eucharist"^[187]. The uneven quality of some images does not touch the feast: its preface is one of the most doctrinal texts of the Missal^[188].

Objection 2 — "Adoring a Heart of Flesh Is Idolatry"

The objection. Adoration is due to God alone. An organ of the human body, even Christ's, is a creature; to render it a worship of adoration is to divinize matter. That was the accusation of the Jansenists of the Synod of Pistoia: the faithful were said to adore the flesh of Christ separated from his divinity^[189].

Answer. The Church adores the person, not the isolated organ. Pius VI said so in condemning Pistoia: the faithful adore the Heart of Jesus "inasmuch as it is the Heart of Jesus, that is, the heart of the person of the Word, to whom it is inseparably united," just as the dead body of Christ, still united to the divinity, was adorable in the tomb^[190]. Pius XII gave the reason: this Heart is hypostatically united to the person of the Son, and therefore it is owed "the same worship of adoration with which the Church honours the very person of the incarnate Son of God"^[191]. Leo XIII concluded: every honour rendered to this Heart "is really and truly rendered to Christ himself"^[192]. The distinction between adoring God and venerating a creature is explained in What is the difference between adoration and veneration?.

Objection 3 — "A Private Revelation Cannot Impose a Feast on the Whole Church"

The objection. Public Revelation is closed; private revelations bind no one. Yet the feast bears the date requested of a religious of Paray: in extending it to the whole Church, Rome seems to have made obligatory, at least in the liturgy, what belongs to a particular revelation.

Answer. Pius XII answered expressly: the Holy See approved the liturgical feast before approving the writings of Saint Margaret Mary, "without taking exact account of any private revelation from God, but by kindly acceding to the requests of the faithful"^[193]. The decree of 1765 does not speak of Paray: it founds the feast upon a worship already received almost everywhere and upon the Gospel, the Son of God "gentle and humble of heart"^[194]. The first feast, that of Saint John Eudes in 1670, is moreover earlier than the great revelations of Paray^[195]. Pius XII specified finally that these revelations "brought nothing new to Catholic doctrine": their importance lies in having invited in an extraordinary way to contemplate the merciful love of God^[196]. Paray gave the feast its date and its accent of reparation; its content is that of the Gospel.

Objection 4 — "Rome Refused It Three Times: It Is Therefore a Doubtful Devotion"

The objection. The Congregation of Rites refused the feast in 1697, in 1727 and in 1729, and one of its firmest opponents was Prosper Lambertini, one of the greatest canonists of his century, who became pope under the name of Benedict XIV. A devotion that Rome set aside for so long cannot be as certain as people claim.

Answer. The refusals concerned neither the love of Christ nor the legitimacy of the cult: as early as 1693, indulgences were granted to confraternities of the Sacred Heart, and in 1697 Rome granted the Visitandines the Mass of the Five Wounds for their day of the Sacred Heart^[197][198]. Lambertini objected to the absence of a juridical examination of the revelation and to an uncertain philosophical thesis about the heart^[199]. When the request was presented differently, the Congregation reversed its decision and specified that in granting the feast it was defining nothing about the opinions of philosophers^[200][201]. This slowness is a sign of seriousness, not of distrust: Rome had likewise hesitated for centuries before extending the feast of the Holy Trinity to the whole Church, on the grounds that the Trinity was already praised every day^[202].

Objection 5 — "The heart is not the seat of feelings: science has made this feast obsolete"

The objection. Modern physiology locates thought and emotions in the brain. A feast founded on the idea that love dwells in the heart would rest on outdated anatomy — and that was already the weak point noted in 1727: the petitioners based their request on the uncertain thesis that the heart is the seat of the affections.

Answer. The Church has never tied the feast to a physiological theory: in 1765, it declared precisely that it was defining nothing about the opinions of philosophers, and spoke of renewing "symbolically" the memory of divine love^[203][204]. Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church, had drawn from the failure of 1729 a hope grounded in a stronger argument:

"The hope we have of one day seeing this concession granted for the Heart of the Lord, we base not on the opinion of the ancients, but on the common opinion of philosophers, ancient as well as modern, according to which the human heart, even if it were not the seat of the affections, is the principle of life […]. If therefore the heart is one of the first sources of human life, there can be no doubt that the heart has a first share in the affections of man." — Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Novena of the Heart of Jesus, introduction, quoted by N. Nilles (Ignispedia translation)^[205]

Pius XII added that Christ, having taken a true body, was "endowed with a physical heart like our own; since, without this most excellent part of the body, there can be no human life, even as regards the affections"^[206]. The language of Scripture points in the same direction: when God says in Hosea "My heart turns against me" (Hos 11:8), the heart denotes the innermost of the person, and it is in this sense that the feast understands it.

Objection 6 — "A feast of guilt, which frightens instead of consoling"

The objection. The vocabulary of the feast — reparation, expiation, outrages, ingratitudes, amende honorable — seems to burden the faithful with a diffuse guilt and to present a God who complains. Such a feast risks nourishing fear rather than trust.

Answer. Reparation here is a response of love. Pius XI gave its purpose: that, admiring "the infinite charity of the Redeemer", we render "more ardently love for love"^[207]. The request of Paray came from the same impulse — Margaret Mary wanted to "render love for love" — and it ended with a promise: "my Heart will expand to pour out abundantly the influences of its divine love"^[208]. The liturgy of the feast speaks of no threat: the collect asks for "a more abundant grace" drawn from "this divine source", and the antiphon of vespers sings: "The Lord carries us in his arms, he holds us to his heart"^[209]. The complaint of the Heart of Jesus is that of a love that wants to be loved; Leo XIV summed it up in 2026: "his Heart is the source of mercy"^[210].

Saint Claude La Colombière: "to publish what you expect from your servants"

The Jesuit, then superior of the small residence of the Society of Jesus at Paray, received the account of the great revelation and made it his own mission^[211]. During his retreat in London, in 1677, he wrote:

"I recognized that God wanted me to serve him by bringing about the fulfillment of his desires concerning the devotion he suggested to a person to whom he communicates very confidentially, and for whom he was pleased to use my weakness; I have already inspired it in many people in England. […] Would that I could, my God, be everywhere, and publish what you expect from your servants and friends!" — Saint Claude La Colombière, Spiritual Retreat, London, 1677^[212]

He had copied into that same journal the account of Saint Margaret Mary, with the request for a feast^[213]. His life is presented in Saint Claude La Colombière (1641-1682).

In the writings of Luisa Piccarreta: one heart with the Heart of Jesus

The Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), to whom Jesus dictated for decades the notebooks of the Book of Heaven, reports there a great many words about the Heart of Jesus. One of them connects this Heart to the gift she received the mission to make known, that of living in the Divine Will — not merely doing the will of God, but living by his very Will, to the point that God acts in the soul. One day when she was complaining about the absence of Jesus, he answered her tenderly:

"My daughter, whoever lives in my Will is so identified with Me that his heart and my Heart are but one. As all the souls who are saved are saved through this Heart, these saved souls fly toward their salvation through the beats of this Heart." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 11, 28 July 1915^[214]

This is a private revelation, received as such. It extends the request of Paray in a direction of its own: rendering love for love does not consist only in offering acts of reparation, but in letting the Heart of Christ beat within one's own, to the point of desiring with him the salvation of all. The gift itself is presented in What is the gift of living in the Divine Will?.

The popes before the Heart of Jesus

From Leo XIII to Leo XIV, the popes have made this feast a rendezvous for the whole Church. Pius XII wished that all those who work to establish the Kingdom of Christ see in devotion to the Heart of Jesus "the source and the symbol of unity, salvation and peace"^[215]. Benedict XVI recalled in 2006 that the words of Isaiah that open Haurietis aquas had, fifty years later, "lost none of their meaning"^[216]. On 12 June 2026, at the end of his journey to Spain, Leo XIV celebrated the solemnity by the sea, in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and concluded with an invitation to lift up one's eyes:

"Let us turn our gaze toward Christ crucified: his Heart is the source of mercy, alone capable of saving humanity, which needs forgiveness and reconciliation to attain a true and lasting peace." — Leo XIV, words of thanks at the end of the Mass at Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 12 June 2026^[217]

Related Ignispedia articles

• God's Infinite Love in the Sacred Heart and Divine Mercy — the spirituality of the Sacred Heart, the revelations of Paray, the promises, Haurietis aquas and Dilexit nos
• Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), Saint Claude La Colombière (1641-1682) and Saint John Eudes (1601-1680) — the three saints who prepared the feast
• Sanctuary of Paray-le-Monial and Sanctuary of Montmartre — the two great places of the Sacred Heart in France
• Corpus Christi and Solemnity of the Holy Trinity — the two solemnities that precede the Sacred Heart
• The liturgical year and Ordinary Time — the place of the feast in the cycle of the Church
• Good Friday and Why is Friday penitential? — the day of the pierced Heart
• The Eucharist and Eucharistic adoration — the sacrament at the heart of the feast
• How to grow in reparation and What the saints say about reparation
• Clement XIII, Pius VI, Pius IX, Leo XIII, Pius XI and Pius XII — the popes of the feast
• Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947) and What is the gift of living in the Divine Will?

Principal sources

• Missale Romanum, editio typica, Vatican City, 1970 (Mass of the Sacred Heart, pp. 378-379); Roman Lectionary and Liturgy of the Hours, liturgical translation of the AELF.
• Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, Autobiography, in Life and Works of Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque, 3rd ed. by Msgr F.-L. Gauthey, vol. II, Paris, Poussielgue / J. de Gigord, 1915.
• Saint Claude La Colombière, Spiritual Retreat (London, 1677), in Works, vol. VII, Avignon, Seguin senior, 1832.
• Nicolaus Nilles, S.J., De rationibus festorum Sacratissimi Cordis Jesu et purissimi Cordis Mariae, 5th ed., vol. I, Innsbruck, 1885 (acts of the Congregation of Rites from 1697 to 1856).
• Jean Bainvel, S.J., "Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus", The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. VII, New York, 1910.
• Pius VI, constitution Auctorem fidei (1794), prop. 62-63; Leo XIII, encyclical Annum sacrum (1899); Pius XI, encyclical Miserentissimus Redemptor (1928) and decree of 29 January 1929, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 21 (1929); Pius XII, encyclical Haurietis aquas (1956).
• Saint Paul VI, apostolic letter Investigabiles divitias Christi (1965); Benedict XVI, letters of 15 May 2006 and 16 June 2009; Francis, encyclical Dilexit nos (2024); Leo XIV, homilies of 27 June 2025 and 12 June 2026.
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 478 and 2669.