His father was Nicholas Dupont, a wealthy and slave-owning French planter, his mother was a creole from Martinique, Marie-Louise Gaigneron de Marolles.

He was then sent to France to further his education at the College of Pontlevoy, near the Chateau of Chissay, which belonged to his maternal uncle, the Comte Gaigneron de Marolles.

During this period, Dupont met a number of religious figures including Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart.

After the death of his wife, Dupont and his mother moved to France and, in 1834, settled in Tours, where the physician Pierre Bretonneau was a neighbor.

[4] In July 1837, Dupont, his mother, and daughter visited his maternal uncle at the castle of Chissay-en-Touraine, where while gazing at a picture of Teresa of Ávila, he reportedly experienced a spiritual enlightenment.

Dupont joined the recently formed Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, contributing large sums of money to it.

[5] Often while visiting the estate of his uncle, M. de Beauchamp, he would stop by the nearby Solesmes Abbey, where he became a close friend of Dom Prosper Guéranger.

In 1849, he helped establish nightly Eucharistic adoration in Tours, with friends from the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.

Dupont's charitable works and religious stance became so well known in France that he received many letters, often addressed to "The Holy Man of Tours" and the postmen knew where to deliver them.

They had in common a devotion to the Infant Jesus; Mary of Saint Peter would give Dupont copies of The Little Gospel which he would then distribute.

[11] By the end of his life, Dupont had donated most of his fortune to a number of charities, from the Carmelites to various orphanages, Society of Saint Vincent de Paul and the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Father Javier wrote a biography of Dupont and one of Mary of St Peter and the devotion to the Holy Face.

In the 1930s, an Italian nun, Sister Maria Pierina, associated the image of the Holy Face of Jesus from the Shroud of Turin with the devotion.

[14] 1950 saw the foundation of the Benedictine Sisters of Reparation of the Holy Face, whose aim is an "unceasing effort to stand beside the endless crosses on which the Son of God continues to be crucified".