Pauline-Marie Jaricot (Lyon, 1799 — Lyon, 1862) was a French Catholic laywoman, foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (1822) and of the Living Rosary (1826), two networks of prayer and solidarity that would irrigate the universal Church far beyond her native Lyon.[2][3] Daughter of a wealthy silk merchant, she underwent a conversion at seventeen that turned her away from the world and toward the service of the missions and the poor.[4][5]
From that conversion sprang an intuition of fearsome simplicity: what if every Christian, even the poorest, gave one sou a week for the missions, relying on groups of ten people linked to one another? That small gesture, organized on the scale of a whole people, became within a few years the first missionary social network in Catholic history, the direct ancestor of the Pontifical Mission Societies recognized by Pius XI in 1922.[6][7] Four years later, in 1826, she applied the same principle to invent the Living Rosary: fifteen members, fifteen mysteries, a single decade of the chaplet said by each one every day, without anyone having to pray the whole Rosary.[8][9]
A spiritual friend of the Curé of Ars, a witness of the Lyon workers' revolts, miraculously healed at Mugnano in 1835, Pauline Jaricot then staked her entire fortune on a venture of Christian social reform — a blast-furnace plant meant to offer workers a just wage, a roof and a chapel. Betrayed by dishonest managers, she lost everything there, spending the last ten years of her life in extreme poverty as she strove tirelessly to repay her creditors.[10][11]
She died forgotten on 9 January 1862; designated as official foundress by Pope Leo XIII (brief of 13 June 1881) and declared venerable by Saint John XXIII in 1963, she was finally beatified on 22 May 2022 in Lyon before nearly 13,000 faithful from all over the world, after the recognition of an unexplained healing that occurred in 2012.[12][13] In 2019 Pope Francis held her up as a missionary model, alongside Saint Thérèse of Lisieux and Saint Francis Xavier, during the Extraordinary Missionary Month of October 2019[14]: the humble "Pauline's sou" had become, two centuries later, one of the pillars of missionary funding for the entire Catholic Church.[15][16]
A Lyon youth between silk and piety (1799-1816)
A family of silk merchants attached to the faith
Pauline-Marie Jaricot was born on 22 July 1799 in Lyon, the seventh and last child of Antoine Jaricot, a native of Soucieu-en-Jarrest who had become a prosperous silk merchant, and of Jeanne Lattier, a former worker from the Saint-Paul district whom he had married on 9 April 1782.[17] The family, bourgeois and practising, owned properties in Tassin and at the château of Saint-Vallier; it belonged to the closed world of the Lyon silk merchants, whose prosperity rested on the hard — and often miserable — labour of the Croix-Rousse weavers.[18][19]
At ten, Pauline was sent to a boarding school near Fourvière; on 16 April 1812 she received confirmation and First Communion in Saint-Jean Cathedral.[20] Between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, however, the girl let herself be drawn into the fashionable life of Lyon high society — balls, fine clothes, worldliness — in stark contrast to the piety of her childhood.[21][22]
An adolescence marked by trial
Her mother's death on 26 November 1814 — Pauline was then fifteen — after a grave illness, plunged her into deep emotional isolation.[23][24] Two years later, at about seventeen, a serious fall left her with nervous after-effects affecting her speech and movements — a condition modern biographers retrospectively liken to Sydenham's chorea.[25] From this double trial — emotional, then physical — there grew in her a new interiority, a first detachment from the glittering world she had begun to frequent.
Conversion and the vow of virginity (1816-1818)
"Woe to you who laugh": the Palm Sunday sermon
The decisive turning point came in Lent 1816. In Lyon's Saint-Nizier church, a sermon by Father Würtz on the vanity of the world struck Pauline to the heart: in it, she later said, she recognized the exact portrait of the frivolous girl she had become.[26][27] The grace of that Palm Sunday 1816 durably overturned her life — she renounced in one stroke worldliness, jewels and the pleasures of her rank, turning instead to a life of intense prayer.
The vow of perpetual virginity at Fourvière (25 December 1816)
On 25 December 1816, in the chapel of Our Lady of Fourvière overlooking Lyon, Pauline Jaricot vowed perpetual virginity.[28][29] That choice, which she kept secret for many years, did not distance her from the world: on the contrary, it freed in her a missionary energy that would soon unfold on a universal scale. Nothing in that silent vow of a seventeen-year-old girl hinted that it would open the way to one of the vastest movements of missionary solidarity in the history of the Church.
The Reparatrices of the Heart of Jesus (1817)
As early as 1817, barely converted, Pauline founded a first association of piety: "The Reparatrices of the Heart of Jesus, unknown and despised", a group of young women committed to a life of reparative prayer and discreet charity.[30] That modest first attempt already contained in germ the method she would soon generalize: gathering isolated wills into an organized, praying network.
"To give much to others, one must draw from one's own heart; and to feed that heart, one must draw from the heart of God." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot[31]
Birth of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (1818-1822)
The call of her brother Philéas and the China missions
In 1818, Pauline's brother Philéas Jaricot, then a seminarian at Saint-Sulpice and a candidate for the Paris Foreign Missions, asked his sister to find financial supporters for the distant missions, particularly in China.[32][33] Between 1815 and 1820, a new missionary wind was blowing over the Church of France, wounded by the Revolution — but the missions cruelly lacked means.[34] It was that double call, familial and ecclesial, that set Pauline's intuition in motion.
"Pauline's sou" and the system of tens (1819-1820)
Between 1819 and 1820, with women workers employed at the silk factory run by her sister and brother-in-law, Pauline set up a weekly collection of one sou a week, handed over "from hand to hand", accompanied by an intention of prayer for the missions.[35][36] The decisive idea came to her one evening in December 1819: instead of multiplying isolated collections, form groups of ten people, each pledging to give a weekly sou, to say a daily prayer for the missions, and in turn to recruit ten new donors.[37]
The system then unfolded as a pyramid: ten contributors formed a "ten", whose leader was a dizainière; ten dizainières elected a centenière coordinating a hundred households; and so on, until whole neighbourhoods were covered, then towns, then countries.[38][39] That network, of almost childlike simplicity, made it possible to raise considerable sums without ever asking anyone for a disproportionate financial sacrifice — taking up, in its own way, the Gospel principle of the widow's mite: little, given by the greatest number, becomes much.[40]
The official foundation of 3 May 1822
On 3 May 1822, in Lyon, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith was officially constituted, with its headquarters in the very city where it had all begun "from hand to hand" three years earlier.[41][42] When the structure proved able to run without her and to grow far beyond her personal scale, Pauline never sought to keep control of it:
"So much the better, if the work has been taken up by hands more skilled than mine." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot[43]
Convinced moreover that information about the missions had to be widely spread in order to nourish donors' generosity, Pauline organized from 1822 the printing and distribution of missionary bulletins and letters — the seed of the future Annales de la Propagation de la Foi, which would become one of the main sources of information on Catholic missions in the nineteenth century.[44]
From a Lyon intuition to the Pontifical Mission Societies (1843-1926)
What in 1819 had been a neighbourhood collection became, within a century, the backbone of missionary funding for the entire Catholic Church. In 1843, at the request of Bishop de Forbin-Janson, Pauline advised the foundation of Holy Childhood, a society of baptized children praying and contributing for other children across the world.[45] In 1889 came the Society of St Peter the Apostle, devoted to forming local clergy; in 1916, the Pontifical Missionary Union mobilized priests and religious in the service of mission.[46]
In May 1922 — almost a hundred years to the day after the Lyon foundation — Pope Pius XI unified these initiatives into four Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS), giving Pauline Jaricot's intuition the status of a universal pontifical work; in 1926, the same pope instituted World Mission Sunday, explicitly taking up the original principle: "from each according to their means, to each according to their needs".[47] Two centuries later, the PMS are present in more than 140 countries and fund over 5,000 missionary cooperation projects every year.[48]
The Living Rosary: praying the chaplet fifteen together (1826)
A chain of prayer rather than a solitary chaplet
In 1826, Pauline applied to the chaplet the associative logic that had made the Propagation of the Faith a success. The principle of the Living Rosary is simple and inspired: divide the traditional fifteen decades of the Rosary among fifteen members, each pledging to say a single decade every day while meditating on the mystery assigned to them.[49][50] Thus, without anyone saying the whole Rosary, it is the complete Rosary that rises to Heaven each day, carried by the communion of the "fifteen".
Papal approval and the movement's expansion
The association received official approval from Pope Gregory XVI by pontifical brief.[51] It met with dazzling success: by the time of Pauline's death in 1862, there were about 2,250,000 members in France — a considerable figure for an initiative born of the sole imagination of a young laywoman from Lyon.[52][53] The movement has crossed the centuries: after Saint John Paul II added the luminous mysteries in 2002, the Living Rosary is now prayed twenty strong rather than fifteen, without losing anything of its founding principle.[54]
That charism of "the little that becomes much when pooled" echoes the very pedagogy of many saints of the Rosary: see Why do Catholics pray the Rosary? and What do the saints say about the Rosary?.
A spiritual friendship with the Curé of Ars
Meeting in 1816, a shared devotion
Pauline Jaricot first met John Mary Vianney in 1816, when he was a young curate in his thirties received at her father's house in Lyon: the two immediately shared a common devotion to Saint Philomena.[55] When Vianney became parish priest of Ars in 1821, the bond did not loosen: the holy curé even sought Pauline's financial support for his ministry.[56] In 1834, she gave him a shrine containing a statue of Saint Philomena for the little church of Ars.[57]
The last meeting, in March 1859
Their last meeting took place in March 1859. Pauline, then fifty-nine, arrived frozen with cold; she said to the holy curé:
"Monsieur le Curé, do not try to remedy the cold; I am used to it. Warm rather my poor soul with a few sparks of faith and hope." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot, at Ars, March 1859[58]
The Curé of Ars then gave her a small wooden cross to help her meditate on the sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, and blessed her.[59] John Mary Vianney died on 4 August 1859; Pauline survived him by a little less than three years.[60] That the foundress of the Living Rosary and the future patron of parish priests thus supported each other, on the eve of their respective deaths, says enough about the depth of their friendship in the faith.
Facing the Lyon workers' revolts (1830-1834)
Lyon, at the turn of the 1830s, was a city under strain: the canuts, the silk-weaver workers of the Croix-Rousse, toiled up to seventeen hours a day for derisory wages, and their anger repeatedly erupted in violently repressed insurrections.[61][62] Pauline Jaricot, a silk manufacturer's daughter, never kept her distance from that workers' suffering.
Offering herself "as a victim for France" (July-August 1830)
During the revolutionary insurrection of late July 1830, Pauline went up to Fourvière and offered herself there in prayer "as a victim for France", in a gesture of intercession that would become characteristic of her whole spirituality as a committed laywoman.[63]
Beside the wounded canuts (November 1831)
During the first canut insurrection, in November 1831, Pauline went to the Morand bridge, at the heart of the fighting, to help the wounded alongside the doctors. On 22 November, the bloodiest day of combat, she prayed:
"I pray to the Virgin to give me strength, and I beg her to ease the sufferings of these men who fought for a just cause." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot, 22 November 1831[64]
In April 1834, during a new and even bloodier insurrection, Pauline took refuge with the Blessed Sacrament in an underground shelter, where she remained three days and three nights in continuous prayer while fighting raged through the streets of Lyon.[65]
The "three tyrannies" denounced by Pauline Jaricot
From that direct contact with workers' misery, Pauline drew a precise social critique, formulated well before the great social encyclicals of the Magisterium. She denounced what she called three tyrannies weighing on the Lyon working class:
| Tyranny denounced | Concrete form denounced by Pauline Jaricot |
|---|---|
| Avarice | The refusal to grant workers a genuinely just wage |
| Impiety | Being forced to work on Sundays, the Lord's day |
| Prodigality | Living conditions so degrading that they drove some women workers to prostitution |
That denunciation, voiced by an heiress of the silk bourgeoisie against the practices of her own social milieu, foreshadowed — half a century early — the insights Leo XIII would develop in Rerum novarum (1891).[66] Pauline's Lyon contemporary, Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, carried on the same fight from Paris at the same time — proof that this generation of nineteenth-century laypeople saw, before many clerics, that charity must also become justice.
Healing at Mugnano and Roman influence (1835-1839)
Struck by a grave illness, Pauline undertook in 1835 a pilgrimage to Mugnano del Cardinale, in Italy, to the tomb of Saint Philomena, whose devotion she was one of the great promoters in France. On 10 August 1835, she was healed; she attributed her healing to the young martyr's intercession.[67][68] Received by Pope Gregory XVI, she returned to Rome in 1839, where she was triumphantly welcomed as the foundress of two societies already flourishing throughout Christendom.[69]
The Rustrel blast-furnace venture and ruin (1844-1852)
A project of Christian social reform
In 1844, Pauline wrote to Cardinal Lambruschini proposing a free-loan bank for poor families.[71] The following year, in 1845, two businessmen proposed that she take over a bankrupt plant, a blast furnace near Apt in the Vaucluse, endowed with all the deposits of iron ore, fuel and fluxes needed to produce first-quality cast iron.[72] Pauline saw in it the chance to realize on a grand scale her ideal of Christian social reform: offering honest workers a decent wage, worthy housing for their families, a school for their children and a chapel for their life of faith.[73][74] She would later admit she had been seized by the project as if by vertigo:
"It took less than that to make my heart beat. For me it was like Eve's gaze upon the fatal apple." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot, on the Rustrel project[75]
Investing an entire fortune (8 September 1845)
On 8 September 1845, Pauline invested her entire personal fortune in the project — 700,000 gold francs.[76] A hundred workers, housed on site with their families, then worked in the plant; a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels hosted weekly Masses, and schools were opened for the workers' children.[77][78]
The managers' betrayal and collapse (1846-1852)
The venture, however, quickly slipped from its foundress's control: Pauline entrusted its management to recommended men who proved dishonest.[79] As early as May 1846, two managers were imprisoned for embezzlement.[80] Despite her efforts to set things right, the plant never recovered: it finally had to be sold on 12 May 1852.[81] Pauline then solemnly pledged to repay herself all the creditors and shareholders who had trusted her — a pledge she pursued, in destitution, to her last breath.[82][83]
The last ten years in poverty (1852-1862)
Though the financial ruin dates from the Rustrel affair (1845-1852), biographers readily count twenty years of suffering, from 1841 to 1861: that is Pauline's whole final crossing, far beyond the industrial disaster alone.[84]
The Fourvière footpath
Seeking resources to honour her debts, Pauline conceived in 1852 a toll path linking the montée Saint-Barthélemy to the basilica of Fourvière; it was opened on 8 December 1852, feast of the Immaculate Conception.[85] That small income, like all she could still gather, was immediately paid over to her creditors.
Journeys to Rome to repay her creditors
In 1856, Pauline travelled once more to Rome to seek Pope Pius IX's help in her repayment efforts.[86] She who had founded two societies sustained by millions of faithful worldwide found herself, at the end of her life, reduced to literally begging enough to honour her pledged word.
The Lorette House
Since 1832, Pauline had lived at the Lorette House, bought on the montée Saint-Barthélemy, on whose pediment she had inscribed: "Mary conceived without sin, pray for us" (« Marie conçue sans péché, priez pour nous »).[87] There she had established perpetual Eucharistic adoration and a small community, the Daughters of Mary, which became the seat of the Living Rosary.[88] It was in that house, stripped of everything yet still inhabited by prayer, that she spent her last twenty years.
"A poor woman who has only God as friend, only God as support… but God alone suffices." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot[89]
Six years before her death, in a spiritual testament, she summed up her whole final crossing in a single sentence:
"My only treasure is the Cross!" — Blessed Pauline Jaricot, spiritual testament[90]
Death and posthumous rehabilitation (1862-1881)
Death at the Lorette House (9 January 1862)
Pauline's heart condition worsened during 1861. She died at the Lorette House in Lyon on 9 January 1862, aged sixty-two, ruined and in debt, yet faithful to the end to her pledge to repay her creditors.[92][93] She was buried in the Loyasse cemetery, in the family vault.[94] Those who had ruined her work through dishonesty, she forgave to the very end:
"My God, forgive them and shower them with blessings." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot[95]
The brief of Leo XIII (13 June 1881)
It took until 1881 for a pope to publicly restore the honour of the foundress who had died forgotten and under suspicion of financial imprudence. On 13 June 1881, Pope Leo XIII solemnly rehabilitated Pauline Jaricot by pontifical brief:
"By her faith, her trust, her strength of soul, her gentleness and her serene acceptance of every cross, Pauline showed herself a true disciple of Christ." — Pope Leo XIII, brief of 13 June 1881[96]
The cause for beatification (1930-2022)
Opening of the cause and venerability (1930-1963)
Pauline Jaricot's cause for beatification was officially introduced on 18 January 1930, earning her the title of Servant of God.[97] After a preparatory congregation on the heroicity of her virtues held on 22 April 1952, Pope Saint John XXIII signed, on 25 February 1963, the decree proclaiming the heroicity of the virtues of Pauline-Marie Jaricot, who henceforth became venerable.[98]
Little Mayline's miracle (2012-2020)
On 29 May 2012, in Nice, little Mayline Tran, aged three and a half, choked on a piece of sausage during a family meal; her heart stopped in her father's arms.[99] Despite several resuscitations, the child remained in a catastrophic neurological state — a score of 3 on the Glasgow scale, the gravest, with severe cerebral anoxia; doctors spoke of irreversible lesions and a very guarded prognosis.[100] In mid-June 2012, a novena to Pauline Jaricot was begun by the family, while the Missionaries of the Living Rosary also prayed for the child; the novena ended on 23 June 2012.[101]
In the days that followed, Mayline's condition improved unexpectedly; before the end of 2012, the child was fully recovered, with no after-effects, to the great astonishment of the medical staff.[102] A diocesan inquiry was opened in 2019; the medical board of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints concluded to a medically inexplicable healing, and the theological commission recognized Pauline Jaricot's intercession.[103] On 26 May 2020, Pope Francis authorized the publication of the decree recognizing that miracle, definitively opening the way to beatification.[104][105]
The beatification in Lyon (22 May 2022)
The beatification ceremony was celebrated on 22 May 2022 at Lyon's Eurexpo complex, before some 13,000 faithful from five continents, with over five hundred priests present.[106][107] Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, presided over the Mass on behalf of Pope Francis. In his homily, he meditated on the gifts Pauline Jaricot had received — the word of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, peace — inviting the faithful in her footsteps to become, like her, "in love with Jesus" and missionaries at the service of the poorest.[108]
- 22 July 1799Birth in LyonSeventh child of a silk-merchant family
Pauline-Marie Jaricot is born in Lyon, daughter of Antoine Jaricot and Jeanne Lattier.
- 25 December 1816Vow of virginity at FourvièreA silent consecration
After her Lent 1816 conversion, Pauline vows perpetual virginity in the chapel of Our Lady of Fourvière.
- 3 May 1822Foundation of the Propagation of the FaithThe 'sou a week' on the scale of the Church
The Society for the Propagation of the Faith is officially constituted in Lyon.
- 1826Foundation of the Living RosaryFifteen members, fifteen mysteries
Pauline invents the principle of the "groups of fifteen" each day praying one decade of the Rosary.
- 8 September 1845Investment in the Rustrel blast furnaces700,000 francs committed
Pauline stakes her whole fortune on a model plant for workers, soon ruined by dishonest managers.
- 9 January 1862Death at the Lorette HouseRuined but true to her word
Pauline dies in Lyon, in debt, after devoting her last ten years to repaying her creditors.
- 25 February 1963Declared venerableDecree of Pope Saint John XXIII
John XXIII proclaims the heroicity of Pauline Jaricot's virtues.
- 22 May 2022Beatification in LyonBefore 13,000 faithful at Eurexpo
Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle presides, on behalf of Pope Francis, over Pauline Jaricot's beatification Mass.
What Blessed Pauline Jaricot teaches today
Pauline Jaricot's journey comes down to one central lesson, in several forms: the little, pooled and carried by prayer, becomes much. Three traits remain especially timely:
- Mission does not wait for the clergy. At nineteen, with no ecclesiastical authority and no fortune of her own to distribute, a young laywoman invented a method of collection that funded Catholic missions for two centuries. Missionary holiness is not reserved for religious sent far away: it begins in the sou given each week and the faithfully kept prayer.
- Charity must become justice. By denouncing, as early as the 1830s, the "three tyrannies" inflicted on Lyon workers, then risking her whole fortune to offer them dignified work, Pauline anticipated the Church's social teaching by half a century — at the cost, for her, of total ruin.
- Faithfulness matters more than success. Betrayed, ruined, reduced to misery by others' dishonesty, Pauline never renounced her pledge to her creditors nor her trust in Providence. Her holiness is not that of visible success, but that of a surrender held to the very end — an echo, in a nineteenth-century laywoman's life, of the total handing over of one's own will into God's hands that the spiritual tradition calls abandonment to the Divine Will.
"A poor woman who has only God as friend, only God as support… but God alone suffices." — Blessed Pauline Jaricot[109]
For further reading
- Saint John Mary Vianney — the Curé of Ars, Pauline Jaricot's spiritual friend from 1816 to their last meeting in 1859.
- The shrine of Ars — the place of John Mary Vianney's ministry, which Pauline visited regularly.
- Blessed Frédéric Ozanam (1813-1853) — another nineteenth-century layman, Pauline's contemporary, founder of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.
- Pope Leo XIII — who publicly rehabilitated Pauline Jaricot in 1881 and, ten years later, published the social encyclical Rerum novarum.
- Rerum novarum and the social doctrine of the Church — the social teaching Pauline Jaricot had anticipated by her deeds.
- Why do Catholics pray the Rosary? — on the devotion at the heart of the Living Rosary founded by Pauline.
- What do the saints say about the Rosary? — the witness of other saints to that Marian prayer.
- Catholic missions in Africa — one of the great fields of action historically supported by the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.
Notes and References
Picture credit — PMS France, photograph of the portrait kept in Lyon: Wikimedia Commons entry, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file, unmodified.
1Pauline Jaricot Association (paulinejaricot.org), "Biographie de Pauline Jaricot": paulinejaricot.org. Born 22 July 1799 in Lyon, daughter of Antoine Jaricot and Jeanne Lattier (married 9 April 1782); boarding school at Fourvière from age 10; confirmation and Communion on 16 April 1812; fashionable life from 13 to 17; conversion in Lent 1816 (Father Würtz's sermon at Saint-Nizier); vow of perpetual virginity on 25 December 1816 at Fourvière; foundation of the Reparatrices of the Heart of Jesus in 1817; her brother Philéas's call in 1818 for the China missions; the weekly "sou" 1819-1820; official foundation of the Propagation of the Faith on 3 May 1822; the saying "So much the better, if the work has been taken up by hands more skilled than mine"; foundation of the Living Rosary in 1826, approved by brief of Gregory XVI, about 2,250,000 members at her death; Lyon insurrections of 1830 (offering "as a victim for France"), 1831 (aid to the wounded of the Morand bridge, saying of 22 November 1831) and 1834 (three days underground with the Blessed Sacrament); the "three tyrannies" denounced (avarice, impiety, prodigality); the 1835 healing attributed to Saint Philomena; journeys to Rome in 1835 and 1839; letter to Cardinal Lambruschini in 1844; purchase of the Rustrel blast furnaces in 1845, investment of 700,000 francs on 8 September 1845, about a hundred workers housed on site, chapel of Our Lady of the Angels, managers imprisoned in May 1846, sale of the plant on 12 May 1852; Lorette House acquired in 1832, inscription "Marie conçue sans péché, priez pour nous", Daughters of Mary; Fourvière toll path opened 8 December 1852; journey to Rome in 1856 to see Pius IX; death on 9 January 1862 at the Lorette House, burial in the Loyasse cemetery; the saying "A poor woman who has only God as friend…"; rehabilitation by Leo XIII's brief of 13 June 1881, full quotation.
2 11 17 18 20 21 23 26 28 30 32 35 39 43 49 51 54 61 63 64 65 66 68 69 71 73 76 77 80 81 82 85 86 87 88 89 92 94 96 109Pontifical Mission Societies — PMS France (opm-france.org), "Histoire": opm-france.org. Foundation of the Propagation of the Faith on 3 May 1822 by Pauline Jaricot, described as "the first missionary social network"; the principle of a collector of ten people each themselves collectors of ten others; foundation of Holy Childhood on 19 May 1843 at Bishop de Forbin-Janson's initiative after consulting Pauline Jaricot; foundation of the Society of St Peter the Apostle in 1889 by Bishop Cousin and Jeanne Bigard; foundation of the Pontifical Missionary Union in 1916 by Blessed Paolo Manna; unification of the four societies into the Pontifical Mission Societies by Pope Pius XI in May 1922; institution of World Mission Sunday by Pius XI in 1926, with the formula "from each according to their means, to each according to their needs"; the PMS today present in 140 countries, supporting over 1,100 dioceses.
3 7 15 42 45 46 47Wikipedia (EN), "Pauline Jaricot" (encyclopaedic article, cross-checked sources): en.wikipedia.org. Born 22 July 1799 in Lyon, youngest of Antoine and Jeanne Jaricot's seven children, father owning a silk factory; brother Philéas gone to the missions; introduced to social life at fifteen; sermon on vanity; serious fall at seventeen with nervous after-effects (retrospective Sydenham's chorea); mother's death worsening her isolation; intense life of prayer and vow of perpetual virginity on 25 December 1816; foundation of the Living Rosary in 1826 (fifteen decades shared among fifteen members), canonical approval by Gregory XVI; weekly sou collection with the women workers of her sister and brother-in-law's factory, leading to the foundation of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in 1822; declared "pontifical" by Pius XI on 3 May 1922; spiritual direction by Saint John Mary Vianney; printing and distributing religious literature from 1822; healing of 10 August 1835 at Mugnano attributed to Saint Philomena; purchase around 1845 of a blast-furnace plant as a model of Christian social reform (housing, school, chapel), management entrusted to dishonest persons, bankruptcy declared in 1862, fortune exhausted, end of life in destitution; death on 9 January 1862 in Lyon aged 62; remains transferred to Lyon's Saint-Nizier church since 1935; beatification cause opened 18 January 1930 (Servant of God); venerable by decree of Pope John XXIII; miracle recognized 26 May 2020 by Pope Francis; beatification on 22 May 2022 at Lyon's Eurexpo stadium, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle presiding on the pope's behalf.
4 8 10 22 24 25 27 29 33 36 44 50 67 74 79 83 97 98Nominis (French Bishops' Conference), "Bienheureuse Pauline Jaricot": nominis.cef.fr. Born 22 July 1799 in Lyon, died 9 January 1862 in Lyon; laywoman beatified in 2022; foundress of the Propagation of the Faith, now the Pontifical Mission Societies; creator of the Living Rosary in 1826, gathering about two million people at her death; lightning conversion at seventeen; miracle recognized by decree of 26 May 2020; the saying "To give much to others, one must draw from one's own heart; and to feed that heart, one must draw from the heart of God"; patronage of the missions.
5 9 31 52Pauline Jaricot Association (paulinejaricot.org), "La Propagation de la Foi": paulinejaricot.org. Revival of the missionary spirit between 1815 and 1820; Pauline's brother asking her to collect funds; Pauline's "sou" method with an intention of prayer, handed over from hand to hand; the idea of groups of ten in December 1819 (daily prayer, weekly sou, recruiting ten new members); structure in tens (dizainière), hundreds (centenière); official foundation on 3 May 1822 in Lyon.
6 34 37 38 41Diocese of Lyon (lyon.catholique.fr), "Bienheureuse Pauline Jaricot, missionnaire de Lyon": lyon.catholique.fr. Spiritual conversion at seventeen; foundation of the Propagation of the Faith in 1819, officially recognized in 1822; foundation of the Living Rosary in 1826; commitment to the silk workers during the canut insurrections of 1831 and 1834; creation of a model plant at Rustrel in 1845 founded on human dignity; beatification on 22 May 2022 in Lyon (Eurexpo), presided over by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, about 12,000 to 13,000 faithful present; miracle recognized in May 2020, healing of little Mayline, whose father Emmanuel Tran published the account under the title Sauvée par un miracle; liturgical feast kept every 9 January, the anniversary of her death.
12 19 62 93 104 106Aleteia (fr.aleteia.org), "La guérison de Mayline, le miracle qui a permis la béatification de Pauline Jaricot" (29 May 2020): fr.aleteia.org. On 29 May 2012, in Nice, Mayline Tran, three and a half, choked on a piece of sausage during a family meal; her heart stopped in her father's arms, several cardio-respiratory arrests occurred despite resuscitations; diagnosis of a score of 3 on the Glasgow scale (the gravest), severe cerebral anoxia, lesions judged irreversible, very guarded prognosis, child in a vegetative state under respiratory assistance and artificial feeding; mid-June 2012, novena of prayer to Pauline Jaricot begun by the family and by the Missionaries of the Living Rosary, ending 23 June 2012; unexpected improvement of the child's condition in the following days; full recovery recorded before the end of 2012, with no after-effects, to the astonishment of the medical staff; diocesan inquiry opened in 2019; medical board of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints concluding to a medically inexplicable healing; theological commission recognizing Pauline Jaricot's intercession; decree of the miracle authorized by Pope Francis on 26 May 2020.
13 99 100 101 102 103 105Pope Francis, homily at vespers opening the Extraordinary Missionary Month, Vatican basilica, 1 October 2019: vatican.va. "Today we begin the missionary month of October, accompanied by three 'servants' who bore much fruit": Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Saint Francis Xavier and "Venerable Pauline Jaricot, a working woman who supported the missions through her daily labour: through the offerings she set aside from her wages, she originated the Pontifical Mission Societies"; "A religious sister, a priest and a laywoman accompany us": Pauline Jaricot is held up there as a missionary model, with no title of patroness.
14Pontifical Mission Societies — PMS France (opm-france.org), "Pauline Jaricot, une sainte moderne": opm-france.org. Death in January 1862 at the Lorette House of a heart disease; lay consecration by solemn vow at the chapel of the Fourvière basilica; decree of the miracle authorized by Pope Francis on 26 May 2020, confirmation of the heroicity of the virtues by John XXIII in 1963; Living Rosary founded in 1826 in groups of fifteen (twenty today), about 2,250,000 faithful members at Pauline's death, a "living" prayer because put into practice; "Pauline's sou" on the model of the widow's mite between 1819 and 1820; Society for the Propagation of the Faith officially created on 3 May 1822, now the first pontifical missionary society, today present in more than 140 countries and funding over 5,000 projects a year; plan to evangelize the working world in 1845 by buying a model plant with housing, schools and chapels; ruin and extreme poverty after the managers' betrayal; forgiveness granted by Pauline to those who had ruined her; Pope Leo XIII's saying on her fidelity to Christ.
16 40 48 53Aleteia (fr.aleteia.org), "La belle amitié entre Pauline Jaricot et le saint curé d'Ars" (27 May 2020): fr.aleteia.org. First meeting in 1816, Pauline aged seventeen, at her father's house in Lyon, with curate John Mary Vianney (thirty), around a shared devotion to Saint Philomena; Vianney becomes parish priest of Ars in 1821 and seeks Pauline's support; in 1834, Pauline gives a shrine with a statue of Saint Philomena for the church of Ars; Pauline's last visit to Ars in March 1859, exact saying "Monsieur le Curé, n'essayez pas de remédier au froid ; j'y suis habituée. Réchauffez plutôt ma pauvre âme par quelques étincelles de foi et d'espérance"; gift of a wooden cross for meditating on the sorrowful mysteries, then blessing; death of John Mary Vianney on 4 August 1859, of Pauline Jaricot on 9 January 1862.
55 56 57 58 59 60Picture credit — Éditions Émeraude, Arles, postcard "Rustrel — Usine Gavot — Les Hauts-Fourneaux": Wikimedia Commons entry, public domain according to the entry. Date not stated; the document does not identify the exact works acquired by Pauline.
70Colette Tempère (historian), "Pauline Jaricot (1799-1862), une Lyonnaise engagée aux côtés des canuts" (article consulted via fr.readkong.com): fr.readkong.com. In 1845, two businessmen propose to Pauline Jaricot that she take over a bankrupt blast-furnace plant near Apt in the Vaucluse, close to a chapel dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels, with all the deposits of iron ore, fuel and fluxes suited to producing first-quality cast iron; Pauline plans to invest capital intended for a free-loan society for poor families; Pauline's saying reported by the historian on her initial enthusiasm for the project, "It took less than that to make my heart beat. For me it was like Eve's gaze upon the fatal apple".
72 75 78Collège des Bernardins (collegedesbernardins.fr), "Bienheureuse Pauline Jaricot, vie et fondations": collegedesbernardins.fr. Birth on 22 July 1799; radical conversion in Lent 1816; vow of perpetual virginity at Fourvière; inspiration of the Propagation of the Faith in autumn 1819; foundation of the Living Rosary in 1826; the plant affair between 1841 and 1861 (twenty years of suffering); declaration of venerability by John XXIII on 25 February 1963; beatification on 22 May 2022; quotation from the spiritual testament written six years before her death, "My only treasure is the Cross!"; saying of acceptance and forgiveness, "My God, forgive them and shower them with blessings"; foundation of three main works: the Propagation of the Faith, the Living Rosary and the Daughters of Mary; loss of her 700,000-gold-franc fortune through her associates' dishonesty; healing attributed to Saint Philomena after a pilgrimage to Rome.
84 90 95Picture credit — John Samuel, entrance of Pauline Jaricot's house, 17 August 2022: Wikimedia Commons entry, CC BY-SA 4.0. Original file, unmodified.
91Vatican News (EN), "The beatification of Pauline Jaricot brings pilgrims from all over the world to France" (May 2022): vaticannews.va. Beatification celebrated on 22 May 2022 at Lyon's Eurexpo stadium, presided over on Pope Francis's behalf by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle; over 12,000 faithful from all over the world, over 500 priests from five continents present; miracle recognized on 26 May 2020, healing of a three-year-old girl, Mayline Tran, in Lyon; summary biography: birth on 22 July 1799, death on 9 January 1862, member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and of the Living Rosary Association, weekly sou collection with the women workers of her sister and brother-in-law's silk factory, spiritual direction by Saint John Mary Vianney, management entrusted to dishonest persons leading to bankruptcy declared in 1862; Cardinal Tagle's homily meditating on the gifts received by Pauline Jaricot (the word of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, peace) and inviting the faithful in her footsteps to become, like her, "in love with Jesus" and missionaries at the service of the poorest.
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