(OSV News) — The University of Notre Dame was consecrated for the first time to the Sacred Heart of Jesus Sept. 25 following an evening Mass celebrated by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend at the Indiana institution.

The faithful processed with the Eucharist to a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus at the center of campus for a prayer of consecration, where the bishop and university leaders prayed for an end to divisions and strength to love selflessly like Jesus.

In his homily, Bishop Rhoades said that the human heart desires a joy and happiness that can only be satisfied by the heart of God. People’s sinfulness, however, creates an obstacle to seeking truth and meaning. With the Incarnation, he said, God “sent his Son into the world to love us with a human heart.”

God’s transformative love

Warning of the harm technology, especially artificial intelligence, can bring when not oriented toward true human flourishing, Bishop Rhoades said that a Catholic university is a place where “the dehumanizing technocratic paradigm … is rejected in light of Catholic social teaching.”

“The mission of the Church is not to try to construct a world independent of God, our Creator. Our mission is to build up the kingdom of God, a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace,” Bishop Rhoades continued. “The Sacred Heart of Jesus is precisely the image that expresses our mission.”

He added: “Only this love, the love of the Heart of Christ, can transform the human heart and bring true peace to the world.”

Student-led initiative

Students led the initiative to consecrate the university to the Sacred Heart after being inspired by the U.S. bishops’ consecration of the United States to the Sacred Heart in June, according to the university. 

“Students from a variety of groups and backgrounds came together to focus on this devotion,” Father Gregory Haake, a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross and vice president in the university’s Office of Mission Engagement and Church Affairs, in a Sept. 22 press release from the university. “And, if they are called to the Sacred Heart, to me that means they want to bring God closer to them and to feel more tangibly the abundant love of God and to imitate it.”

Set apart for sanctification

In 2025, Bishop Rhoades proposed the U.S. consecration, which took place amid the United States’ semiquincentennial anniversary celebrations. He was inspired, in part, by Pope Francis’ 2024 encyclical on the Sacred Heart, “Dilexit Nos.”

An act of consecration “means to set something apart to be sanctified or to be made holy — and individuals consecrate themselves all the time,” Father Haake explained.

He noted that the priests of Holy Cross have a devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which “is a devotion that focuses on love, mercy, forgiveness and sacrifice.”

Sacred Heart in Notre Dame’s ‘DNA’ 

Although the Sacred Heart consecration was the university’s first, “devotion to the Sacred Heart is in the DNA of this university, just as devotion to Our Lady is in its DNA,” Bishop Rhoades said in the homily.

In founding the Congregation of Holy Cross in the 1830s near Le Mans, France, Blessed Basil Moreau named the Sacred Heart of Jesus the patron of his community of priests in 1841, the year before he sent Father Edward Sorin to found a university in Indiana, Bishop Rhoades noted.

The university’s church, now a basilica, was likewise dedicated to the Sacred Heart in 1888. Father Sorin called the Basilica of the Sacred Heart’s Lady Chapel “the Chapel of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart,” and its stained-glass includes “three themes … truly at the heart of the spirituality of the Congregation of Holy Cross and of the University of Notre Dame: Our Lady, the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Cross,” Bishop Rhoades said.

Sacred Heart statue at campus’ center

Located in its main quadrangle, the university’s Sacred Heart statue has stood on campus since 1893. The cast iron artwork was sculpted by Robert Cassiani and modeled after a similar statue at the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Paris’ Montmartre neighborhood. The statue faces the “Golden Dome” of the university’s administration building, which is topped by a gleaming statue of Mary.

Holy Cross Father Robert A. Dowd, Notre Dame’s president, concelebrated the Mass with Bishop Rhoades. In the press release, he said that one of his favorite places on campus as an undergraduate was the area around the Sacred Heart statue.

“Like Jesus, we are called to have a heart that is wide open to God and to others, especially those who are most vulnerable and on the margins of our society,” he said. “And, at Notre Dame, it is important that head and heart are always working together to address the world’s most important challenges.” 

Devotion’s long history

Devotion to the Sacred of Heart of Jesus, which traces its roots to at least the second century, grew during the Middle Ages and was later extended to the universal Church following Christ’s revelations of his Sacred Heart to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, a 17th-century French nun.

The Notre Dame community will have an opportunity to learn more about St. Margaret Mary and the Sacred Heart devotion when the university’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center will host a film screening of the hit French film “Sacré Coeur” (“Sacred Heart: His Reign Has No End”) Oct. 2.

“As the Church was born from the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the University of Notre Dame was born from the heart of the Church,” Bishop Rhoades said in his homily. “The Church has a mission in the world to proclaim the redeeming love of God in Christ. Notre Dame shares in that mission.”