Between December 1673 and June 1675 Margaret Mary Alacoque, a Visitation nun at Paray-le-Monial in Burgundy, reported that Christ showed her his heart and asked for a feast in its honour, Communion on the first Friday of each month, and a Holy Hour on Thursday nights. Her Jesuit confessor, St. Claude de la Colombière, believed her, and the devotion spread through the Jesuits across Europe and its missions.
Pius IX extended the feast to the whole Church in 1856; Leo XIII consecrated the human race to the Sacred Heart in 1899; Pius XI canonized Margaret Mary in 1920; and in 1956 Pius XII's encyclical Haurietis Aquas set out the devotion's theology. The image of Christ pointing to his wounded heart hangs in Catholic homes on every continent.
At Paray-le-Monial pilgrims visit the Chapel of the Apparitions in the Visitation monastery, where Margaret Mary's relics rest, the Romanesque Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and the chapel of St. Claude de la Colombière. The town is in the Burgundy countryside between Paris and Lyon and is not one of our hubs, but it fits a French route.