Our History: An Innovative Approach to Ministry

The founder with early members of the congregation.

The Priests of the Sacred Heart (SCJs) was founded in 1878 by Fr. Leo John Dehon in St. Quentin, France, a city ravaged by the industrial revolution. In addition to running parishes, preaching missions and teaching, SCJs reached out to society’s forgotten corners. For example, they began a ministry to the deaf when there was little sensitivity to the needs of people with physical handicaps, and they served as chaplains in a French textile factory, introducing Christian values into the dealings of labor and management.

Fr. Dehon himself was a social activist, making church leaders aware of working class hardships and helping workers organize to combat unjust conditions. This innovative approach to pastoral ministry attracted members to the new religious community. In the first 10 years there were 60 professed members; after 20 years, there were 130; and on the 50th anniversary of its founding, the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart had almost a thousand members.

Fr. Dehon with the congregation’s first missionaries.

Yet the congregation faced hurdles. At the beginning of the 20th century, an anti-Catholic government came to power in France, confiscating church goods, closing Catholic schools and expelling religious congregations. World War I brought economic hardship, the destruction of property and even death.

The single most devastating loss of life, however, occurred in 1964 in the former Belgian colony of the Congo, when 29 members of the congregation, including a bishop, were murdered during a bloody rebellion (the Congo has gone through several upheavals since then, first as Zaire, and now as the Democratic Republic of Congo).

Today the congregation numbers about 2,200 members on five continents and in 40 countries. It is headquartered in Rome, and Fr. José Ornelas Carvalho, SCJ, is its general superior. The diversity and innovation which marked the early years of the Priests of the Sacred Heart continue in ministry today.

The congregation in its early years.