The Sacred Heart Badge

• Posted on 4 June 2023
• By Theresa Zepeda
• 0

Wearing of the Sacred Heart Badge, has become a lost devotion. Here is a bit of history, on its inception and many proofs of its Spiritual Protection.
Our Lord revealed to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque His wish for her to order a picture of the image of His Sacred Heart for people specifically to venerate and have in their homes and also small pictures to carry with them. St. Margaret Mary always kept a Sacred Heart badge with her and inspired her novices to do the same. She made many badges and often said this practice was very pleasing to the Sacred Heart.

The popularity of the Badge increased suddenly due to a very dramatic event in the city of Marseilles in France. In the year 1720, about thirty years after the death of St. Margaret Mary, Marseilles was ravaged by the plague. About one thousand persons died each day from the disease. Fear had reached near panic proportions. The Bishop of Marseilles asked the nuns of the city to make thousands of Sacred Heart Badges similar to the kind used by St. Margaret Mary and her friends. When the Badges were ready, the Bishop led a procession to the center of the city. There he consecrated Marseilles to the Sacred Heart, and everybody present put on a Sacred Heart Badge. From that moment not one new case of the plague was reported.

True Catholics found protection in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus during the period of the French Revolution which erupted in France in 1789. Many priests, nobles, and people who resisted the bloody anti-Catholic revolution wore the Badge. Even ladies of the court, like the Princess de Lamballe, wore the Badge embroidered with precious materials over the fabric. The simple fact of wearing the Badge became a distinctive sign of those opposed to the French Revolution.

The Chouans, heroic Catholics from Mayenne (Western France), especially from the Vendee, who resisted the impious French revolutionaries of 1789 and confronted them with energy and religious ardor, embroidered the Badge of the Sacred Heart on their clothes and banners. They shaped it as a coat of arms to reaffirm their Catholic faith and wore it as a symbolic armor for defense against enemy attacks. 

Many other Catholic leaders and heroes also wore the Badge as a "spiritual armor." They fought and died in defense of Holy Mother Church like the brave peasants who fought under Andreas Hofer (1767-1810), known as the "Chouans from the Tyrol."

These men wore the Badge as spiritual protection in the battles against Napoleon's army that invaded the Tyrol.

The Cristeros in Mexico, in the first half of the 20th century, also wore the Badge. They took up arms against the anti-Christian governments that oppressed the Church in Mexico.

In Spain, the famous Carlista regiments called "requetes" likewise wore the Badge. They were famous for their religious piety and boldness on the battlefield, and their intervention was decisive for the triumph of the anti-Communist Catholics in the Civil War of 1936-1939.

More recently, similar events took place in Cuba. the Catholic Cubans who fought against the Communist regime had a special devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When they were imprisoned and taken to the 'paredon" (shooting wall) for summary execution, they faced Fidel Castro's executioners with the cry, "Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long Live Christ the King!).

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