On Friday, July 24, participants in the Poitiers Session 2026 made a pilgrimage to Montbernage, the working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Poitiers where the young Pierre Coudrin lived in hiding, under the clandestine name of Marche à Terre during the harshest years of the Revolution.
A Neighborhood with Its Own History
Jeanne Cadiou sscc accompanied us and set the scene: Montbernage, in the lower part of Poitiers, was linked to the city by the Joubert Bridge, the oldest and most historic of them all, predating the 12th century. After the victory over the Protestants in the siege of 1569, an inscription was carved there inviting those who crossed to pray a Hail Mary. It was a neighborhood with a poor reputation, unhealthy, battered by the floods of the Bernage stream, inhabited mostly by farmers and gardeners wary of the "new ideas" of the Revolution. Also with us was Bertrand Cherrier sscc, Provincial Superior of France, who serves as chaplain of the chapel of the Daughters of Wisdom that we visited today.
A hundred years before Pierre Coudrin, it was Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort who left a deep mark there. Between 1701 and 1713 he preached in Montbernage and turned a former dance hall — "la grange de la Bergerie" — into a modest chapel, laying the groundwork for the method that would later inspire the Good Father himself: placing Mary alongside Christ, addressing the poor, and making them the protagonists.
When Pierre Coudrin arrived at the end of 1792, he found that legacy still alive: the mission cross and the statue of Mary that still preside over the sanctuary today. He settled there clandestinely, much loved by the local population, and celebrated night Masses organized as a ritual of shared watchfulness — the horn that gave warning, the young women posted by the Joubert Bridge to raise the alarm, the Masses that began around eleven at night and continued until dawn. It was in Montbernage that he took his first steps as a "zelator" of the Sacred Hearts, before settling permanently in Poitiers in 1794.
Devotion to the Heart of Mary
In the chapel of the Daughters of Wisdom, Jeanne Cadiou then spoke to us about devotion to the Heart of Mary, a discreet but profound devotion in the Congregation's tradition. She recalled that, according to an old guide to Poitiers, the very name "Sacred Hearts" may trace back to a chapel of the "Good Hearts" founded in this same Montbernage, where, since the time of Grignion de Montfort, an image of Mary seated, with the Child on her lap and a golden heart around her neck, has been venerated: "Mary, Queen of Hearts."
The Good Father spiritually inherited that heart-of-Mary devotion. In his memoirs, Hilarion records that at the profession of October 20, 1800, "Father Coudrin became the favored son of the Heart of Mary," and the Good Father himself wrote in 1801 that "it is through the divine Heart of Mary that we adore the Sacred Heart in our house." Henriette, for her part, urged her sisters to "turn to Mary" so as always to share "in the affections of her Heart."
Jeanne Cadiou walked us again through the journey of the Heart of Mary in the Gospel: the "yes" of the Annunciation, the silence beside the manger, the sword of sorrow foretold by Simeon, the "keeping all these things in her heart" after the episode at the Temple, the discreet intercession at Cana, and finally the Cross, where the Mother of Christ becomes Mother of humanity. She invited us to "welcome the Heart of Mary into our house," as Joseph did, and to live out the threefold orientation running through the session: to contemplate as Mary did in the Temple, to live as Mary did at Cana, to proclaim as Mary did at the foot of the Cross.
Eucharist and return to the Grand'Maison
The day culminated in the celebration of the Eucharist in the chapel, before setting off on the return journey across the historic Joubert Bridge. In his homily, Valentinus Sedu Ritan sscc reminded us that "just as the heart of Mary became fertile ground for the Word of God, we too are called to let God shape our heart. Consecration does not simply mean having devotion to the Sacred Hearts; it means allowing our own heart to come to resemble the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary."
07/25/2026