GALLIFET, JOSEPH. - Jesuit theologian and promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart, b. at Aix on May 3, 1663, d. at Lyon on Sept. 1, 1749. A religious at Avignon in 1678, he had as his spiritual director Bl. Claude de la Colombière, from whom he drew that zeal for the cult of the Sacred Heart which is the hallmark of his life. Ordained a priest, and healed from a mortal illness through a vow by the most reverend Father Croiset, he consecrated himself entirely to the cause of the Sacred Heart, in whose honor he built chapels at Grenoble and Besançon and established confraternities in several cities of France.
During his stay in Rome (1724-30: in those years he was assistant of France to the general of the Society of Jesus) he wrote the classic treatise De cultu Sacrosancti Cordis Domini nostri Iesu Christi in variis christiani orbis provinciis iam propagato (Rome 1726), which was immediately translated into various languages and of which the author prepared the French edition under the title: De l'excellence de la dévotion au Coeur adorable de Jésus Christ (Lyon 1733): with this work he resolved all the difficulties that seemed to hinder the institution of a liturgical feast in honor of the Sacred Heart, which precisely in 1725 had been requested, for the third time, from the Sacred Congregation of Rites by the Visitandines, supported by the kings of Spain and Poland and by the queen of France. The negative response of the Sacred Congregation did not weaken the ardor of G., who before leaving Rome founded a confraternity of the Sacred Heart in the church of St. Theodore, which kept the devotion alive throughout the eighteenth century, until the triumph of the idea under the pontificates of Clement XIII and Pius VI. In 1743 G. defended, before Benedict XIV, the Mémoire on the divine communications concerning devotion to the Sacred Heart, drawn up by St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. He also wrote a learned short work De cultu immaculati cordis Mariae, reprinted several times, and ended his enlightened apostolate by treating, in various short works, of the spiritual life.