Leon Dehon

Léon-Gustave Dehon, SCJ (14 March 1843 – 12 August 1925), religious name Jean of the Sacred Heart, was a French religious priest of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which he founded.

Dehon's focus in his ecclesial life was to express his closeness with workers but he especially promoted a devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

He established the Congregation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1878, dedicated to this task and to working in the foreign and diocesan missions in France and abroad. But impediments caused the congregation's dissolution. Dehon later reformed and reestablished it in 1884, leading the congregation until his death. It expanded to North and South America in the early 20th century. He had been named as venerable on 8 March 1997. this caused the suspension of the process until a reexamination of his writings could be undertaken.

On 5 February one French historian drew attention to seven controversial texts in which Dehon expressed anti-Semitic opinions. The French paper La Croix published extracts, in which Dehon wrote: Jews were "thirsty for gold" Jews' "lust for money is a racial instinct in them" The Talmud is "a manual for the bandit, the corrupter, and social destroyer" Dehon also suggested in his writings that Jews should wear special markings, that ghettos should be re-established, and Jews be excluded from land ownership and teaching positions.

Before John Paul II's death in 2005, Cardinal Archbishop of Paris Jean-Marie Lustiger sent an urgent letter to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger expressing alarm at Dehon's writings and asking for an examination. The French Episcopal Conference urged caution with the cause, and the French government warned that it would not send a representative to the beatification if it went ahead. Benedict XVI later ordered an urgent reexamination of Dehon's writings, with the first meeting scheduled for that 24 June. The pope tasked Cardinal José Saraiva Martins to lead the effort, and also appointed Cardinals Paul Poupard and Roger Etchegaray.

Further developments Pope Francis on 5 June 2015 expressed his desire for Dehon's cause to proceed, referring to the founder of the Priests of the Sacred Heart as "the almost beatified Dehon". While anti-Semitism had been prevalent in Dehon's lifetime, the Catholic Church had worked to reduce this bias among its clergy and congregations following the disastrous Holocaust of World War II and the effort since to build more just societies. The pope said that attitudes must be viewed in their historical context, and said that he wanted the cause to "end well". Francis added that "it's a hermeneutic problem" that warranted an evaluation of the "hermeneutic of the time", rather than evaluating Dehon's writings through contemporary viewpoints.