Chapelle de Picpus in Paris

Picpus exists because the Revolution's killing machine worked faster than its burial capacity. It endures because the families of victims chose prayer over vengeance. The statue of Our Lady of Peace, survivor of her own brush with destruction, found her final home in this place of reconciliation.

In the summer of 1794, the Revolutionary tribunal accelerated its work. Between June 14 and July 27, 1,306 people were condemned and executed at Place du Trône Renversé (now Place de la Nation). The guillotine operated at industrial pace; the city's cemeteries could not keep up. This field at Picpus, belonging to a convent dissolved in the Revolution, became a dumping ground for the dead.

The killing stopped on July 27 when Robespierre fell. Within years, the émigré families began returning. They found the mass graves unmarked but not forgotten. In 1802, they purchased the land and entrusted it to the Sisters of the Sacred Hearts, who had themselves survived exile.

The statue of Our Lady of Peace had its own journey. Given to Capuchin monks in the sixteenth century, venerated throughout the wars of religion and the age of Louis XIV, she was hidden during the Terror by a faithful friar. Eventually she passed to the sisters and came to Picpus in 1806—a Madonna of healing installed in a chapel of grief.