Sacred Heart, Edinburgh, formally known as the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, is a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

run by the

Society of Jesus The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded in 1540 ...

, close to the city centre of

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

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. It is situated in

Lauriston Lauriston ( ) is an area of central Edinburgh, Scotland, and home to a number of significant historic buildings. It lies south of Edinburgh Castle and the Grassmarket, and north of The Meadows public park. Lauriston is the former location ...

, midway between the

Grassmarket The Grassmarket is a historic market square, market place, street and event space in the Old Town, Edinburgh, Old Town of Edinburgh, Scotland. In relation to the rest of the city it lies in a hollow, well below surrounding ground levels. Locati ...

and Tollcross, on the edge of Edinburgh’s historic Old Town. The church building was opened in 1860 and is a

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History

Founding

The church had its beginnings when Bishop James Gillis, Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern District, invited the

to come to Edinburgh and set up a parish close to the city centre. The architect of the church was a Jesuit priest, Fr. Richard Vaughan SJ, who was also uncle of Bernard Vaughan, a notable Jesuit preacher and writer. Initially, while the church was being built, Mass was celebrated in a temporary chapel on Hunter's Close in the Grassmarket part of the city. The first Mass was on 31 July 1859 by

Albany James Christie Albany James Christie (18 December 1817 – 2 May 1891) was an English academic and Jesuit priest. Life His father was Albany Henry Christie of Chelsea, London, and he was related to the auction house family founded by James Christie. In 1835 he ...

SJ. The first

Mass Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...

in the newly constructed Sacred Heart Church was celebrated on 8 July 1860: Bishop Gillis preached at the Mass and the celebrant was the then Jesuit provincial, a Fr. Thomas Seed SJ.

Twentieth century

Over the years, the church was restored and renovated on numerous occasions. In 1907, the organ was installed and was modified in 1963 and 1974. In 1957, a mural was painted in the church above the altar. It was designed by Derek Clarke, a lecturer at the Edinburgh School of Art. From 1963 to 1990 there alterations made to make the church more compatible with the requirements of the post-

Vatican II The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent Catholic ecumenical councils, ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilic ...

era, and the mural was covered over with wallpaper. There were renovations made with the structural trusses being reinforced in 1996 and north facing wall restored in 1998.

Parish

The Jesuits are resident next door to the church and are involved with the chaplaincy to

Edinburgh Royal Infirmary The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh (RIE) was established in 1729, and is the oldest voluntary hospital in Scotland. The new buildings of 1879 were claimed to be the largest voluntary hospital in the United Kingdom, and later on, the Empire."In Comi ...

. The parish celebrates Mass every day of the week as well hosts saying the Rosary every weekday lunch time. In addition, the parish worked with the nearby Little Sisters of the Poor care home in Gilmore Place until it closed in 2018. From 2017 the parishes in Edinburgh were organised into clusters to better coordinate their resources. Sacred Heart is one of four parishes in Cluster 4 along with St Columba's, St Peter's and St Mark's.

Edinburgh Jesuit Centre

Next door to the church is the Edinburgh Jesuit Centre. It was originally called the Lauriston Centre. It was designed to be a place for the Edinburgh Jesuit Community to present issues of spirituality, social justice and adult faith formation to the city of Edinburgh and the surrounding area. It hosts talks on the spirituality of St. Ignatius of Loyola and modern day Jesuit writers and theologians. Speakers such as Michael L. Fitzgerald have been featured on topics such as Christian Muslim relations and the centre has been awarded for its efforts to advance the ecological agenda through a series of talks and events. On 30 November 2020,

St Andrew's Day Saint Andrew's Day, also called the Feast of Saint Andrew or Andermas, is the feast day of Andrew the Apostle. It is celebrated on 30 November, during Scotland's Winter Festival. Saint Andrew is the disciple in the New Testament who introduc ...

, during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, it was officially renamed the Edinburgh Jesuit Centre and began hosting series of talks concerning contemporary issues and the Catholic Church. Its first talk was by Sir Tom Devine on ‘The Social Emancipation of Scottish Catholics since 1945’.Edinburgh Jesuit Centre launched by Sir Tom Devine on St Andrew's Day
from Jesuit.org.uk, 30 November 2020, retrieved 21 February 2021 Subsequent series of talks during the Covid epidemic attracted record numbers of participants. These can be found on the EJC website.

References

External links

*
Edinburgh Jesuit Centre
{{DEFAULTSORT:Edinburgh, Sacred Heart

Sacred Heart The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus () is one of the most widely practised and well-known Catholic devotions, wherein the heart of Jesus Christ is viewed as a symbol of "God's boundless and passionate love for mankind". This devotion to Christ is p ...

Listed Roman Catholic churches in Scotland

Jesuit churches in the United Kingdom Roman Catholic churches completed in 1860 1860 establishments in Scotland 19th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in the United Kingdom Jesuit development centres

Neoclassical church buildings in Scotland