On 10 June 1898 her confessor at the Good Shepherd monastery wrote to Pope Leo XIII to state that Mary of the Divine Heart had received a message from Christ requesting the Pope to consecrate the entire world to the Sacred Heart. The Pope initially did not believe her and took no action. However, on 6 January 1899, she wrote another letter asking that in addition to the consecration, the first Fridays of the month be observed in honour of the Sacred Heart. In the letter, she also referred to the recent illness of the Pope and stated that Christ had assured her that Pope Leo XIII would live until he had performed the consecration to the Sacred Heart. The theologian Laurent Volken states that this had an emotional impact on Leo XIII, despite the theological issues concerning the consecration of non-Christians.Laurent Volken, 1963, Visions, Revelations and the Church P.J. Kenedy PublishersNiels Christian Hvidt, 2007, Christian Prophecy: The Post-Biblical Tradition, OUP Press p. 242
