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A Guide to Seeking the Holy Face During Lent, by Donald Jacob Uitvlug – Brown Pelican Society of Lousiana

A Guide to Seeking the Holy Face During Lent, by Donald Jacob Uitvlug

Will You Sit with Christ’s Holy, Sorrowful Face this Lent?

February 16, 2026

Left: The Sainte Face Laon (the Holy Face of Laon); right: A processed image of the face on the Shroud of Turin. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

By Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, Catholic World Report, March 4, 2025

Donald Jacob Uitvlugt writes from Little Rock, Arkansas. You can find some of his theological musings at “Drops of Mercy”.

The Secret of the Holy Face: The Devotion Destined to Save Society
By Fr. Lawrence Daniel Carney III, TAN Books, 2022, Hardcover, 216 pages

Fr. Laurence Carney sees devotion to the Holy Face as a call to spiritual arms and as the banner of a Catholic counter-revolution.

The Secret of the Holy Face: The Devotion Destined to Save Society
By Fr. Lawrence Daniel Carney III
TAN Books, 2022

On September 13, 1843, Our Lord spoke to the heart of a Carmelite nun in the city of Tours, France. Jesus told her that He was calling her to a program of reparation for sins against the first three of the Ten Commandments, especially sins of blasphemy, indifference, and the profanation of Sundays. Over the next several years, that nun, Sister Mary of St Peter, received a series of mystical experiences known as “interior locutions” which spelled out the nature of that work of reparation: It would all center on devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

The messages of Sr Mary of St Peter reached the ears of a pious Catholic layman in the city of Tours, Leo DuPont. M DuPont set up an image of the Holy Face based on the Veil of Veronica in Rome in the drawing room of his legal practice. He lit a vigil lamp in front of the image. When people asked for M DuPont’s prayers, he would give them blessed oil taken from the lamp and he would pray before the image of the Holy Face. And miracles happened. Leo DuPont gained a reputation as the “Holy Man of Tours” and as a wonder worker. But he attributed everything to his devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.

In 1887, inspired in large part by the work and miracles of Leo DuPont, Pope Leo XIII established an Archconfraternity of the Holy Face. Saints Louis and Zelie Martin, the parents of Therese of Lisieux, enrolled in the Archconfraternity and passed on their devotion to the Holy Face to all their children. This devotion was so important to their youngest daughter that when she became a Carmelite, she took the name “Therese of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face.” The best authorities on Therese say that if we do not understand her devotion to the Holy Face, we will not understand her Little Way. Finally, in 1958, Pope Pius XII authorized a Feast of the Holy Face, to be observed on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. …

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