Children of Mary of the Sacred Heart

The Children of Mary of the Sacred Heart is a Catholic sodality founded by Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat in Lyons, France in 1823 (some older sources say 1818, but their archivist says 1823).

Madeleine Sophie Barat (12 December 1779 – 25 May 1865) established this lay women's group eighteen years after the original Society of the Sacred Heart, the congregation of nuns that she founded in 1800.

[5] She used the term to describe an association of lay people who met for a religious purpose, similar to a confraternity, in this case to join themselves to her and her sisters, and "act in the world in our stead.

They additionally took part in specific activities such as ministering to orphaned children, visiting hospitals, going to the homes of the poor and bringing necessities, running reading circles for younger women, and encouraging young men for the priesthood.

We know this because Louis Baunard, rector of the Catholic church of Lille and a historian, wrote that they were "A vast secular association of Christian perseverance, ... [with] spiritual exercises for means, charity and mutual support for resource, and sanctification of self and others for aim, the glory of the adorable Heart of Jesus for final end.

Mother Barat made a rule for all of her RSCJ that once each year a priest would offer a retreat that the sisters would host, and to which lay people, especially the various groups of the Children of Mary, would be welcome.

Lady Georgiana Fullerton, the English novelist, philanthropist, and third-order Franciscan who wrote the biography of Mother Barat that is cited here, became president of one of these sodalities.

Lady Fullerton wrote, What struck us as eminently, if not peculiarly, distinctive of this institute, is the intense desire, and we might almost say the special gift, of imparting to those they educate, and those they influence, the spirit of active apostleship in the world, which is limited to no particular sphere of action, but spreads itself in every place and throughout every social circle, where those inspired with it and trained to it may be thrown.