Preview: 140 Years of Perpetual Adoration in Sacre-Coeur

On August 1, 2025, the Basilica of Sacre-Coeur will celebrate 140 years of Perpetual Adoration. To prepare for the anniversary, the basilica will hold a novena of 140 adorers per night before the great celebration, beginning on July 24. We'll talk about this on Monday, July 21 as the next in our Son Rise Morning series of 2025 anniversaries. As usual, I'll be on the air about 7:50 a.m. Eastern/6:50 a.m. Central. Please listen live here or catch the podcast later here.

If you want to book a flight to participate, you also need to book a room in the hostel, especially for August 1, because the events start at 3 p.m. and end after Midnight:

August 1, 2025
3:00 p.m.: Solemn Mass presided over by Cardinal Christophe PIERRE, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, with Apostolic Blessing granted by Pope Leo XIV.
4:30 p.m.: Grand Eucharistic Procession (bring multicolored rose petals)
5:30 p.m.: Meditated Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament
6:00 p.m.: Solemn Vespers
6:30 p.m. Teaching on the Consecration to the Sacred Heart (At the Crypt. Mandatory, including for renewals of consecration.)
8:30 p.m.: Vigil of Consecration
9:30 p.m.: Compline
10:00 p.m.: Solemn Mass to give thanks to God
11:00 p.m.: Meditated Adoration until midnight
Midnight: Blessing of the faithful and the city with the Blessed Sacrament. Sung Te Deum.

In 2020, Solène Tadié wrote for the National Catholic Register about the perpetual adoration at Sacre Coeur:

Day and night since Aug. 1, 1885, the Body of Christ in the Holy Sacrament has been exposed and adored inside the basilica (except for Good Friday), whatever the external conditions, even the most extreme. This is remarkable, as the history of France hasn’t exactly been calm since that time, including for the Catholic Church, which is also facing an unprecedented wave of secularization at every level of society.

“The adoration hasn’t stopped even for a minute, including during the two world wars,” Sister Cécile-Marie, member of the Benedictine Sisters of the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre and responsible for the nights of adoration at the basilica, told the Register. “Even during the 1944 bombing, when some fragments fell right next to the basilica, the adorers never left.”

Adoration continued throughout the COVID shutdowns with the Benedictine Sisters taking all the hours until others could enter the basilica. Sister Cécile-Marie highlights the bombing of the basilica in 1944 and that's appropriate because Sacre-Coeur was built after France lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and after the uprisings of the Paris Commune.

The selection of the site for the basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, Montmartre, is where Saint Denis, one of the patron saints of Paris, was martyred. The church, built with travertine limestone that exudes calcite when it rains, is bright and white. It's architectural style is Byzantine and the interior is filled with chapels and beautiful mosaics.

Since it was built with the purpose of reparation for the sins of the French nation, many, like Clemenceau and Zola, opposed its construction, but it was finally completed in 1919. In 2022, Sacre-Coeur was named a national historical monument.

Whenever Mark and I visited Sacre-Coeur, we noted the contrast between the square outside the basilica, with souvenir hawkers and tourists just looking out over the vista of Paris beneath, to the quiet and hush of the church inside, with ushers urging men to take off their baseball caps, and muffled sounds of footsteps around the church.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

Praying for Paris

As I watched the confusing reports of the ISIS attacks on Paris Friday night I prayed for the people of Paris and the terror they were enduring. My sister had called me when the first reports came out because she knew that Mark and I love to visit Paris in November. As we discussed it I pointed out that we would likely not have been on the streets after dark, but who knows--during our last trip we stayed in an apartment in the 11th arrondisement (the center of last night's carnage).

ISIS has now spoken up and taken responsibility for these heinous attacks on ordinary people, enjoying dinner, a concert, a soccer game. They described Paris as "the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe". Would that it were so! Paris' laicite and official secularism cannot ignore, however, its rich Catholic Christian heritage.

In October 2012 we visited the Basilica of Sacre Coeur on a chilly morning. It was during the year of Faith and the banners outside the shrine of Eucharistic Adoration and prayers for reparation proclaimed the words of Pope St. John Paul II: "Do Not Be Afraid! Open Wide the Doors to Christ!"

St. Joan of Arc and St. Louis of France for Paris! She helped defeat the English invaders of France while he fought to defend the shrines and Christians of the Holy Land. While the people of Paris mourn and heal and their government plans strategies to defeat their enemies, we pray for them and invoke their great patrons, including Saint Genevieve and Notre Dame!

A Chilly Morning on the Mount

It was a chilly morning in October when we visited Sacre Coeur and Montmartre, via the Metro and the Funiculaire after walking up crowded Rue Steinkerque. Once at Park Willette, the Basilica loomed beatifully above us against the bright blue sky:

The merry-go-round and souvenir hawkers were already very busy. As we walked up the first level to Sacre Coeur, we saw the young men hawking little trinkets prepare for the next wave of tourists. We also saw a tour guide instructing her group on the significance of the basilica and its construction. They left the park and went on to the next tourist spot--inside Sacre Coeur the focus is on prayer and adoration--signs instruct visitors not to take pictures, not to disturb those praying before the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance above the high altar, and for men to take off their hats. Ushers stand to enforce these rules!

Descending from the park, we waited for the funiculaire and then mounted the last steps up the parvis of Sacre Coeur. Before we went inside, I took some pictures of the statues on the facade of the church:

St. Joan of Arc:

St. Louis:

And the Sacred Heart of Jesus:

These banners proclaimed the Year of Faith and quoted Blessed John Paul II:

Inside, after praying before the Blessed Sacrament, I did sneak a couple of pictures:

(This is a chapel with displays about St. Therese of Lisieux--we saw an emphasis on her in many of the churches we visited this trip.)

At the gift shop, I purchased these two chaplets with medals commemorating the 125 years of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Sacre Coeur (and took this picture later that day back at our hotel room):

As this website reminds us:

The site of the 19th-century basilica is traditionally associated with the beheading of the city's patron, Saint Denis, in the 3rd century. According to legend, after he was martyred, Bishop Denis picked up his severed head and carried it several miles to the north, where the suburb of Saint-Denis stands today.

After France's 1870 defeat by the Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War and its aftermath, the Commune of 1871, the basilica was planned as a guilt offering and a vote of confidence to cure France's misfortunes.

The church was dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a cult that gained popularity after 1873, when the first pilgrimage was organized to Paray-le-Monial in Burgundy. It was there that revelations encouraging prayer to Christ's sacred heart had been reported in the 17th century.

The foundation stone of the Basilique Sacré-Coeur was laid in 1875. It was consecrated in 1891, fully completed in 1914, and elevated to the status of a basilica in 1919, after the end of the First World War.

The Sacré-Coeur was paid for by national subscription, and its iconography is distinctly nationalistic. It has much in common, both historically and architecturally, with the Basilica Notre-Dame de Fourviere in Lyon.

Designed by Paul Abadie in a Romanesque-Byzantine architectural style, the Sacré-Coeur was inspired by St-Front in Perigueux (Dordogne), a multi-domed Romanesque church the architect had recently restored.

The triple-arched portico is surmounted by two bronze equestrian statues of France's national saints, Joan of Arc and King Saint Louis IX, designed by Hippolyte Lefebvre.

The Sacré-Coeur Basilica is built of Château-Landon (Seine-et-Marne) stone, a frost-resistant travertine that bleaches with age to a gleaming white.

The apse mosaic, designed by Luc-Olivier Merson (1922), is the largest in the world. It depicts Christ in Majesty and The Sacred Heart worshiped by the Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc and St. Michael the Archangel.