GALLIFET, JOSEPH

GALLIFET, JOSEPH-FRANÇOIS de.—Jesuit theologian and promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart, born at Aix on 3 May 1663, died at Lyon on 1 September 1749. He entered religious life at Avignon in 1678 and had as his spiritual director Blessed Claudio de la Colombière, from whom he acquired that zeal for devotion to the Sacred Heart which characterizes his life. Ordained a priest and cured of a mortal illness through a vow by the pious P. Croiset, he devoted 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 France’s assistant to the superior general of the Society of Jesus), he wrote the classic treatise De cultu Sacrosanesi Cordis su Domini nostri Iesu Christi in variis christiani orbis provinciis iam propagato (Rome 1726), which was soon translated into various languages and whose French edition the author himself prepared under the title: De l'excellence de la dévotion au Coeur adorable de Jésus Christ (Lyon 1733). In this work he resolved all the difficulties that seemed to prevent the institution of a liturgical feast in honor of the Sacred Heart, which had in fact been requested in 1725, 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 G.’s ardor: before leaving Rome, he founded a confraternity of the Sacred Heart in the church of S. Teodoro, which kept 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, composed by St. Margherita Maria Alacoque. He also wrote a learned short work, De cultu immaculati cordis Mariae, reprinted several times, and brought his enlightened apostolate to a conclusion by treating, in various minor works, of the spiritual life.