1610
Ordo Visitationis Beatissimae Mariae Virginis / The Order of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary 

St Francis of Sales (1567–1622) united the first sisters who were led by the noble widow St Jane Frances de Chantal (1572–1641). Initially, they were determined to visit and take care of the poor and the sick, but soon strictly distanced themselves from the world, and the main mission of the Visitation nuns became teaching and bringing up girls.

The Visitation nuns were invited to Vilnius and their convent was generously endowed by a resident of Vilnius, a wealthy widow, Anna Warzkietówna-Karasiowa-Dezelsztowa, whose daughter entered a novitiate of the Visitation nuns in Warsaw. In 1694 the foundation of the new convent in Vilnius was laid, and the nuns settled there in 1698. In 1729, construction of the brick Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and St Francis de Sales began, and was consecrated in 1752. The convent in Vilnius was probably the largest and most important institution for the education for girls of noble families in all of Lithuania during the 18th and 19th centuries. After the uprising of 1863, the convent was suppressed citing the pernicious and uncontrollable influence of the sisters on the girls, and their secret contacts with the rebels. The Visitation nuns in France procured for their sisters in Vilnius, permission to go abroad without the right to return to the Russian Empire. In 1865, the last public service was held in the Church of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus before it was given over to the Eastern Orthodox Church. The convent was given over to Eastern Orthodox nuns. The Visitation nuns returned to Vilnius in 1919, but were deprived of their convent by Soviet and Nazi authorities, and so they moved to Poland after World War II. The Soviet authorities used the residence of the Visitation nuns in Vilnius as a prison.