The Shrine of the Sacred Heart is a Roman Catholic parish established in 1899 in the Mount Pleasant/Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington D.C.

The parish church is a large domed Byzantine structure modeled after the Cathedral in Ravenna, Italy.

Locals also pass on a similar as-yet-unverified story for the mansion and property next door to the church, which houses a branch of the DC Department of Recreation, supposedly because a previous owner donated it to the city out of a fear that it would eventually fall into Catholic hands if it was sold to another private owner.

Though the church was built by wealthy patrons, who reportedly raised the funds in three weeks, it is now spiritual home to many lower-income immigrant families, largely Latin American, with a particular concentration of Salvadoran-Americans.

The parish has a long history of social justice ministry, and has been the frequent host of the District's labor Mass on the Feast of St. Joseph the Worker, as well as the home of the Hermano Pedro homeless outreach program and the Shrine of the Sacred Heart Dinner Program, and is affiliated with local social service organizations such as the Spanish Catholic Center and Neighbors Consejo.

The parish houses large devotions to Our Lady of Guadalupe (Sacred Heart hosts her feast day December 12 for the entire archdiocese) and Saint Óscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, though the movement to beatify and possibly canonize Romero appeared stalled until May 2013, when the postulator for his case announced that it was "unblocked.

[5] Several dozen flags hang from the church's choir loft, representing the nations of birth and ancestry for the highly diverse congregation.

In 1997, then-archbishop James Cardinal Hickey established the Center City Consortium,[7] subsidizing these schools from a general archdiocese fund, pooling their resources, and sharing their costs.