The reading
How it began
Madeleine Sophie dies in Paris in 1865, having founded a congregation of educators for girls across the world. In 1893, for beatification, the coffin is opened. The body is preserved, limbs supple, a fact the nuns recorded with the same precision they brought to school timetables. She was later moved to Jette, where the glass shrine remains.
The day itself
Madeleine Sophie Barat died in Paris on 25 May 1865. She had spent her life founding schools for girls under the title of the Sacred Heart, in a century that did not assume a girl needed Latin, history, or a quiet chapel. In 1893, during the beatification process, the coffin was opened in the presence of physicians and of the postulator. The body was reported flexible, the eyes still in place, the habit intact. She was later transferred to the Sacred Heart house at Jette, on the edge of Brussels, where the glass shrine is in the chapel. Pius XI canonized her on 24 May 1925. The Society’s own account of the 1893 opening is a schoolmistress’s account: names, date, what was seen, no embroidery. The face has darkened since. The shrine is still a school’s chapel, which is the right setting for her.
Reading
How to read St. Madeleine Sophie Barat
A foundress of schools, kept visible. The sign fits: the Sacred Heart congregation was about forming faces, not hiding them. She still looks at the girls who come.
Church status
How this sign has been received
Church-approved
Canonized 1925. Relics in the care of the Society of the Sacred Heart, Jette.
Sources
- Society of the Sacred Heart archives
- Chapel of St. Madeleine Sophie, Jette
For the classroom
St. Madeleine Sophie Barat (Died 1865; found intact 1893, Sacred Heart, Jette (Brussels)). Grade in this encyclopedia: Church-approved. Foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart. Exhumed twenty-eight years after death, the body was flexible, the eyes intact. She is still shown in the chapel at Jette.
