Basilica of the
Sacré-Cœur, Paris A Frenchwoman, Adèle Garnier, in religion, Mother Marie de Saint-Pierre, established the community in
Montmartre (
Mount of the Martyr), Paris in 1898. In 1901 the French legislature passed the
Waldeck-Rousseau Law of Associations which placed severe restrictions on religious bodies such as monasteries and convents and caused many of them to leave France. Mother Garnier relocated the congregation to London in 1903, to what became the
Tyburn Convent in
Bayswater Road, near
Marble Arch. The reason was because it was close to the site of the
Tyburn tree, where 105 Catholic martyrs, including
Saint Oliver Plunkett and
Saint Edmund Campion, were executed during the
English Reformation from 1535 to 1681. The newly arrived nuns established the Martyrs' Shrine to honour the
more than 350 Catholic Martyrs who were executed in England during and after the Reformation. After
World War II, when France had relaxed its laws regarding the independent sector, a number of native French sisters elected to return and set up in France once more. There was a split. The Tyburn Convent is now the Mother House of the London-based congregation.
Devotion Mother Garnier founded the Adorers to carry out
Adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the exposed Blessed Sacrament, originally in the
Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Montmartre. When the community moved to a
religious enclosure, the Adoration shifted to the conventual setting, with numbers gradually increasing to allow for
Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament by the community. The aim of the Adoration is to ask God for the
atonement for offences against the
Sacred Heart of Jesus and the
Blessed Sacrament. Mystical experiences in the original congregation in France indicated that Adoration was needed to atone for
sacrilege and
blasphemy committed by priests and lay people against the Blessed Sacrament. At that time the Foundress also discerned a particular
charism of prayer for priests. Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has continued ever since the convent was established in London, except temporarily during
wartime when the convent building was bombed and Adoration was relocated to
Wadhurst in Sussex. Pilgrims and tourists from all over the world visit the shrine. ==Rule of life==