According to the basilica's website, one of the many people who found solace in the church was Blessed Charles de Foucauld. The pioneering French missionary, who is expected to be canonized soon, consecrated himself to the Sacred Heart in the basilica in June 1889.
He returned from Africa in 1909 and spent a night of Adoration there with his friend, Louis Massignon. He later recalled the evening as a time of grace.
Fr. Stéphane Esclef, Sacré-Cœur's rector, said that, with the basilica's classification as a historic monument, he hoped the church would "be ever more a haven of peace and consolation for all those who need it. That everyone, skeptical, curious, believer or not, can come and leave their joys, their hopes, their sorrows and their distresses."
He quoted Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, who wrote in a preface to a book about the basilica that "any Parisian, any visitor to the capital, can say to himself by seeing on the horizon the white domes of the Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre, that up there, at this moment, we pray for him, for all those he meets and for the whole world."
"May everyone in this place know that a heart awaits him," Esclef said. "An open heart, ready to console and tell him that he is loved. A gentle and humble heart. That of Jesus. A Sacred Heart."
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.