Claire Ferchaud was born a few miles from Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre, in the little village of Loublande, in the province of Vendée. She attended the school of the Sacred Heart and since her early childhood, she said she had had appearances from Jesus Christ, Mary and Saint Joan of Arc. They ‘would come to meet her’ and would give her ‘messages’. In 1916, during World War I, she lived in the convent of the ‘Rinfilières’ at Loublande, France. At that time, she claimed to have been given a vision of Christ himself, a vision of Jesus showing his heart "slashed by the sins of mankind" and crossed by a deeper wound still, atheism. She passed this on to the pastor of the town, the Abbé Audebert.
Ferchaud believed she had been appointed to undertake a mission by Christ, namely, to contact the President of France, Raymond Poincaré, beg him to convert to the right path of Christian civilization, namely Catholicism, to give a good example by rejecting Freemasonry, to display the image of the Sacred Heart on the flag of France and that of the French Army and to allow the carrying of this emblem on the uniforms of the soldiers. On all this, she claimed, would depend the victory over the enemy. Ferchaud expressed all this in a letter which was delivered to the President of the Republic on January 16, 1917, as acknowledged by his Secretary, Mr. Sainsère. As a result of the insistent intervention of Armand Charles de Baudry of Asson, member of Parliament a royalist for the seat of Vendée, it was formally received on 21 March at the Élysée Palace, where she came to deliver her message. She declared that, “The Sacred Heart is the official patron of France. France must recognize God for its master.” “France must show that religion is no longer being persecuted by agreeing to paint the Sacred Heart on its flag.” The President explained that he alone could not change France’s anti-clerical laws, and that he was not permitted to change anything on the national flag. He seems to have promised her to refer the question to the Chamber of Deputies of the Third Republic, but nothing further was done. Claire Ferchaud therefore wrote to him a second letter on 1 May, which also had no effect.
On 7 May 1917, Ferchaud then addressed a letter of warning to 14 generals of the French Army, calling for ‘the image of the Sacred Heart, sign of hope and salvation’, to be inserted onto ‘our national colors’. Fifteen copies of this letter were written and sent to the following generals:
And also to Generals: Édouard de Castelnau, Robert Georges Nivelle, Marie Émile Fayolle, and Ferdinand Foch. It is known today, from two sources which attested to the fact, that only General Foch, ‘consecrated’ the armed forces of the French and their Allies ‘to the Sacred Heart’ on 16 July 1918, during a private ceremony. The Sacred Heart was, in fact, invoked during this conflict by millions of faithful Catholics, but was never placed on the Flag. In fact, the image of the Sacred Heart, was broadcast very widely. Millions of copies were distributed. It was commonly found in the trenches, to the point that a circular from the Minister of War of 6 August 1917 prohibited its exhibition.
Retiring to her native region of Mauges, Ferchaud organized a religious community of "Virgins of Reparation" which received, at first, the support of the religious authorities. On 12 March 1920, however, a decree of the Holy Office disavowed her revelations and stated that belief in the visions of Loublande could not be approved. The Archbishop of Paris, CardinalLéon-Adolphe Amette declared that regretfully he was unable to discover a supernatural inspiration in her statements.
