The Sacred Heart is a large church set back from Lauriston Street in Edinburgh, a quarter-mile (0.4 km) west southwest of the Grassmarket. Dedicated to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, it was built by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1860 as the third Roman Catholic church in the city (the others being St. Mary's Metropolitan Cathedral at the top of Leith Walk and St. Patrick's Church in the Cowgate). Its rather plain pedimented facade is a consequence of its planned eventual conversion into a church-hall for a grand new cathedral which was planned by Bishop Gillis for the East of Scotland. The cathedral was never built and the church was aggrandised in the later 19th C. with large paintings of the Stations of the Cross hung in 1874, a marble pulpit and chapels added 1895 and an organ taken from Roseburn Free Church installed in 1907. In 2019, a shrine venerating St. Oscar Romero of El Salvador (1917-80) was consecrated within the church by Archbishop Leo Cushley.
Adjacent is the Lauriston Hall and Jesuit Centre, built in 1909.
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