Pope Francis’s 2024 encyclical on the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus (the Sacred Heart), drawing on scripture, the Fathers and the visions of Margaret Mary Alacoque. Evidence of present-day teaching, not of first-century events.
Dilexit nos (“He loved us”, from Romans 8:37) is the fourth encyclical of Pope Francis, signed on 24 October 2024. It is devoted to the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus, the devotion traditionally called the Sacred Heart, and was issued during the 350th anniversary of the appearances of Jesus reported by Margaret Mary Alacoque at Paray-le-Monial in France (1673–1675).
The encyclical reads the devotion through scripture, the Church Fathers and later spiritual writers, and treats the heart as a symbol of the unity of a person’s thought, feeling and will. Section 119 recalls Margaret Mary Alacoque’s visions, which shaped the modern form of the devotion, including the First Friday practice. Its later chapters connect the devotion with love of neighbour and with reparation.
For this archive it is evidence of present-day reception: a 2024 papal teaching document grounded partly in a seventeenth-century visionary experience. It shows what the Catholic Church teaches about Jesus and about devotion to him today, not what happened in the first century.
A citation note only: the document’s text is not mirrored in this archive. Follow the link for the official text.
The full text is not reproduced on this site. It is published by the Holy See, which holds the copyright, and this archive keeps only a citation card for it. The introduction above summarises its contents; read the document itself at the official source.
Official text: Dilexit nos (2024), official English text on vatican.va
