St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

Who was St. Madeleine Sophie Barat?

St. Madeleine Sophie Barat founded the Society of the Sacred Heart, a congregation of women religious who give their lives to the Heart of Jesus and to the education of girls and young women. She was born in the Burgundian wine town of Joigny on December 12, 1779, the youngest child of Jacques Barat, a cooper and vine-dresser, and his wife Madeleine Fouffé. She died in Paris on May 25, 1865, after 65 years of leading the Society she began at twenty.

She grew up in the shadow of the French Revolution, when convents were closed, priests were hunted and a whole generation of girls had no one to teach them the faith. Her answer was a school. Through her schools she meant to make known the love of the Heart of Christ, one child at a time. By the time she died the Society had 89 houses on three continents, and she had written more than 14,000 letters to hold them together. Pope Pius XI canonized her on May 24, 1925.

The life of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

A cooper's daughter in Joigny

Sophie was baptized the morning after her birth. Her godfather was her brother Louis, then eleven. Louis, who became a priest, saw what his little sister could do. When he came home to teach at the seminary in Joigny, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, he taught her Latin, Greek, history, natural science, Spanish and Italian, and she was soon reading the classics in the original and outpacing his seminarians.

The Paris archdiocese's 2025 profile notes that her childhood was marked by the stern, Jansenist picture of God as a judge. She spent the rest of her life preaching the opposite: a God who loves.

Paris and the first consecration

After the Terror, Louis brought Sophie to Paris to prepare her for religious life. There he introduced her to Father Joseph Varin, a priest of the Fathers of the Faith who hoped to found a society of women devoted to the Sacred Heart, to do for girls what the restored Jesuits would do for boys. In Sophie he found the person he had been looking for. On November 21, 1800, in a small Paris room, she and three companions made their first consecration. The Society dates its founding from that day.

The first house opened at Amiens in 1801. Because the name "Sacred Heart" sounded political in Napoleonic France, the sisters were at first called Ladies of the Faith or of Christian Instruction. In 1802, though she was the youngest in the house, Sophie was named superior. The Catholic Encyclopedia says her first act was to kneel and kiss the feet of each of her sisters.

Superior general for almost sixty years

In January 1806 she was elected superior general by a single vote. An ambitious chaplain at Amiens nearly split the young Society, and she met him, the Catholic Encyclopedia says, with "prolonged prayer, silent suffering, tact, respect, charity." With Father Varin, by now a Jesuit, she drew up constitutions modeled on those of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Pope Leo XII approved them in December 1826.

In 1804 she received a group of former Visitation nuns at Sainte-Marie-d'en-Haut near Grenoble. One was Philippine Duchesne. In 1818 Sophie sent her with four companions to America, and St. Rose Philippine Duchesne planted the Society on the Missouri frontier. Foundations followed in Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, Algeria, England, Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, South America, Austria and Poland.

In 1820 the Society bought the Hôtel Biron in Paris, a grand 18th-century mansion that became its motherhouse and its most famous school. The building is now the Musée Rodin. From Paris she traveled constantly, often on the eve of revolutions, and governed above all by letter.

Her death on Ascension Day

Madeleine Sophie died at the motherhouse on Ascension Thursday, May 25, 1865, after four days' illness; the Catholic Encyclopedia says she had foretold that she would die on that feast. Humble to the end, she had never let anyone photograph her. The only photograph we have of her was taken after her death. She was buried at Conflans, the Society's novitiate east of Paris, on May 29.

Her canonization and the miracles of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

Work on her cause began within a few years of her death. In 1872 her successor as superior general, Mother Goetz, called in all 14,000 of Sophie's letters, and Church tribunals in Paris and Rome heard the testimony of those who knew her. Pope Leo XIII declared her Venerable on July 18, 1879, and the decree on her heroic virtues followed in 1905. Pope Pius X beatified her in St. Peter's Basilica on May 24, 1908, and Pope Pius XI canonized her there on May 24, 1925, a week after St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

• Miracles for beatification and canonization: approved. The Congregation of Rites examined miracles attributed to her intercession in sessions of 1907 and 1908, and again in 1924 and 1925, and the popes approved them. The Society's published history of the cause does not name the people healed, and we have not been able to verify the details.
• Her incorrupt body: found intact in 1893 and in 1908. The Church does not count incorruption as a miracle in itself, but it has drawn pilgrims to her ever since. Read more about incorruptible saints.

Why St. Madeleine Sophie Barat is the patron of the Sacred Heart schools

She is the founder and patron of the Society of the Sacred Heart, whose sisters write RSCJ (Religiosae Sanctissimi Cordis Jesu) after their names, and of the schools it runs around the world. In 1820 she gathered the superiors in Paris to set a common plan of studies. She wanted it to be, in the Catholic Encyclopedia's words, "solid and serious," forming both mind and character, and she wanted the daughters of the poor taught alongside the daughters of the rich; her houses often ran a free school next to the boarding school. The Society quotes her as saying, "For a single child's soul, I would have founded the Society of the Sacred Heart!"

She also began the Children of Mary, an association for former pupils, at Lyon, and retreats for laywomen at Turin, both in 1832. Teachers and families of Sacred Heart schools ask her prayers, and so can anyone who teaches. Our patron saints of teachers page lists others.

Symbols of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat in art

Because she lived in the 19th century, Madeleine Sophie is shown in the real habit of her Society, not in the robes of an older age. To recognize her, look for:

• The habit of the Society of the Sacred Heart: a black habit and veil over a white bonnet with a fluted frill around the face.
• A crucifix held to the heart: her devotion to Christ crucified and to his Heart.
• The Sacred Heart of Jesus: in paintings and holy cards, often above her or on a banner.
• Children or pupils at her side: her work as an educator. In Enrico Quattrini's marble statue in St. Peter's Basilica, placed in 1934, two children stand at her side, one gazing up at her.
• A book: her learning and her plan of studies.

The portrait at the top of this page follows a likeness by Savinien Petit and gives the classic image of her: the bonnet, the crucifix and a quiet smile.

Her feast day and incorrupt body in Paris

We keep the feast of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat on May 25, the day she died. Sacred Heart schools around the world celebrate it with Mass. In 2025 the Society kept the centenary of her canonization with Masses in Joigny, Rome and Paris. Find other saints of the season on our feast days page.

Her body has traveled. The 1904 laws that expelled religious congregations from France forced the sisters to move it to their house at Jette, near Brussels, where it stayed, later moving to Brussels, for more than a century. In 2009 it came home to Paris. On June 19, the solemnity of the Sacred Heart, it was installed in the Sacred Heart chapel of the Church of Saint-François-Xavier, across the boulevard from the old motherhouse where she died. The reliquary has glass sides so pilgrims can see her.

When Notre-Dame de Paris reopened on December 8, 2024, a relic of St. Madeleine Sophie was sealed into its new high altar with those of four other saints linked to the Church of Paris.

Prayer to St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

There is no single traditional prayer to St. Madeleine Sophie in wide use, and we won't invent one in her name. The Society of the Sacred Heart publishes its own prayers and a nine-day novena for her feast, prayed from May 17 to 25. We can also pray with her own words. In the English translation the Society uses, she said, "If only I could live again, it would be to obey only the Holy Spirit and to act only through him!"

Let us ask her to pray for all who teach and all who are taught, for the sisters and schools of the Sacred Heart, and for every child who has not yet heard how much the Heart of Jesus loves them. St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, pray for us.