Pauline-Marie Jaricot, Apostle of the mission

Pauline-Marie Jaricot (1799-1862), foundress of the Pontifical Society for the Propagation of the Faith, was declared Venerable by saint John XXIII on February 25, 1963.

On 26 May 2020, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate a decree recognising a miracle attributed to Jaricot's intercession. The path is now clear for Jaricot to be beatified..

Pauline-Marie, was born into a wealthy family from Lyon and at the age of 17 she had a sudden conversion, thus deciding to consecrate her life to God with a solemn vow in the chapel of the Virgin of Fourvière in Lyon. In love with the Eucharist, she proposes to young workers of her age to participate in her ideal of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, and ready to commit themselves with her in a life of totalizing piety and service. She, with the strength of her example and the authority of her profound spiritual life, finds many of them totally willing "to always go wherever the Lord needs them". Under the name of «Réparatrices», she constitutes an Association which is the initial expression of a movement that animates devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, to the cult of the Sacred Heart, to the practice of the Living Rosary. These young women begin their spiritual revolution by giving the Church the greatest missionary work ever imagined: the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, officially founded on May 3, 1822. (See http://paulinejaricot.opm-france.org/?lang= it)

In her humility, Pauline underlined that it was not "the flame that lit the fire", but an incendiary fire that spread over the whole face of the earth, (cf. Georges Naïdenoff Pauline Jaricot-Media S. Paul 1999 , pp. 19-20).

From this strong spiritual impetus, Pauline, in totalizing coherence with her ideal, disposed of all her family wealth and proposed together with her Réparatrices and other friends, to meet in "tens" and these in "hundreds" , contributing with 5 sou (10 cents) every month, which was collected in order to reach considerable figures that allowed to set up the first Fund for aid to the Missions around the world.

On the relevance of Venerable Jaricot's spirituality, Chantal Paisant writes: «Of Pauline's apostolic and missionary spirituality we recall three fundamental points for our time: God is love and is incarnated in the quality of relationships and in the spirit of justice that men put in action, with each other and for each other, within human societies; humanity is one, the only people of God, beyond the diversity of nations and cultures; the initiative of a lay woman engaged in the heart of the world in the works of the Church where prayer and social action were inseparable. Pauline was the matchstick that ignited countless Catholic missionary works that continue to spread even today. Her convictions anticipated the social doctrine of the Church and, a century earlier, more than a theme of the Second Vatican Council».

For further information go to the site dedicated to Pauline-Marie Jaricot of the National Direction of the PMS of France.