In the midst of the second
world war Pope Pius XII put the whole world under the special protection of our
Savior's Mother by consecrating it to her Immaculate Heart, and in 1944 he
decreed that in the future the whole Church should celebrate the feast of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. This is not a new devotion. In the seventeenth
century, St. John Eudes preached it together with that of the Sacred Heart; in
the nineteenth century, Pius VII and Pius IX allowed several churches to
celebrate a feast of the Pure Heart of Mary. Pius XII instituted today's feast
of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for the whole Church, so as to obtain by her
intercession "peace among nations, freedom for the Church, the conversion
of sinners, the love of purity and the practice of virtue" (Decree of May
4, 1944).
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