October 26 - From intuition to reality: the founding of the Society of the Propagation of the Faith

When the Concordat re-establishing religious peace in France and came into force (1801-1802), interest in the missions spread to a large part of the French population. Chateaubriand (1768-1848) published Le Génie du christianisme, revaluing the Christian past by dedicating a large section to distant missions. This work was read and reread by many who were to become the architects of the missionary revival. They included de Mazenod, Forbin-Janson, etc. Missionary publications at the time presented missionaries as romantic characters, and adventurers of the faith. A large portion of the public was interested in stories of the missions in China and Latin America. It was in this atmosphere that the last two children of the Jaricot family, Philéas, born in 1797, and Pauline Marie, born in 1799, became passionate about the missions. They wanted to get involved and support missionaries. To Philéas who wanted to go to China, Pauline expressed her wish to follow him. Philéas replied in terms popular in the day, that this was not for girls. Poor little one, you can't go to the missions, but you can take a rake, and collect heaps of gold and then send it to me. (Jean Comby, "Pauline Jaricot et les missions", in Documents Épiscopat N°6/2013 on Pauline Marie Jaricot, Une Œuvre d'amour, published by the General Secretariat of the Conférence des Évêques de France, p. 17)

From 1815 onwards, interest in the foreign missions grew in French Christian public opinion. What was new, was that the commitment to mission did not come primarily from ecclesiastical leaders of old Europe but from the laity. Church leaders gave priority to the interior mission. Our Indies are here, the French bishops replied to a request for priests for the colonies (1815). In 1822, the Bishop of Troyes remarked that "we can look upon ourselves as a mission country." He then added, “if only France could be as easily converted as is Canada, Louisiana and other wilderness frontiers”. (Jean Comby, in Documents Épiscopat, op. cit., p. 17) In 1817, the Parish Foreign Mission Society, engaged in the evangelisation of Asia, founded an “Association of prayers to ask God for the conversion of the infidels, the perseverance of the Christians living among them and the prosperity of the establishments intended to propagate the faith" (Documents Épiscopat N°6/2013 on Pauline Marie Jaricot, p. 17).

The notion of the Propagating the Faith appears in documents promulgated by the Holy See. Indeed, Pope Gregory XV founded the Congregation De Propaganda Fide, Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith or Propaganda, in 1622. The pope gave this new congregation the broadest powers in the field of evangelisation, even if its action was to remain limited as long as the traditional Catholic monarchs continued to exercise official patronage over the missions in their colonies. (See Jean Comby, Deux mille ans d'évangélisation. Histoire de l'expansion chrétienne, Paris, Desclée, 1992, p. 112-113).

At the age of 17, a time when she was concerned about appearing well in society, Pauline experience a profound religious awakening, committing herself to the mission of “propagating the Faith. She decided to dedicate herself totally to the service of God while remaining a laywoman. She began to live modestly and to engage in “good works”, concern for the poor, the plight of workers and the challenge of the missions. She founded an Association of Reparatrixes of the Heart of Jesus, the notion of reparatrix (rectifying, restoring, remedying) being very much in vogue at the time. Through the intermediary of her brother Philéas, who was in Paris at the time and hoping to go to China, Pauline became interested in the Foreign Missions and this new association, which was seeking funds.

From 1818 onwards, Pauline decided to ask for monetary offerings from the workers in her brother-in-law's factory, in Saint-Vallier in the Drôme and then in Lyon, from women who were generally modest, most often silk workers. She asked for a penny a week, an idea that seems to have come from England. Pauline combined prayer for the missions with financial commitment. Towards the end of 1819, Pauline had an "illumination": each person was to find ten associates who would give a penny each week for the Propagation of the Faith. Trusted persons could receive from ten heads of tens the collection of their associates, and then one head would collect from ten heads of hundreds and pay the whole to a common centre.

Pauline had the idea of streamlining the collection so that it is more productive. The idea of creating an organisation to collect money for the missions, particularly those in America, was already circulating in Lyon. In 1802, the Congregation of Gentlemen was founded in Lyon with the help of Pierre Roger, who was to become a Jesuit. It emerged from the Marian associations created by the Jesuits in their colleges and brought together young people who engaged in works of charity and gradually became interested in aiding the missions. When the Bishop of Louisiana in the USA arrived in Lyon, these young people found a new opportunity to act. Pauline’s friend, Victor Girodon, and Benoît Coste, prefect or director of the Congregation of Gentlemen were enthusiastic. Benoît Coste replied to the Bishop’s vicar general (1819-20), who urged him to found an association to help the missions in America. Instead of all the many small associations, would it not be better to limit ourselves to setting up one for all the Catholic missions throughout the world, that is to say, for all the Missions existing at the time, which are not yet so numerous. (Jean Comby, in Documents Épiscopat, op. cit., pp. 18-19).

The first official meeting of the new association, which took the name of Association (Society) of the Propagation of the Faith, took place on 3 May 1822. It was attended by the members of the Congregation of Gentelmen and by Fr. Inglesi, representing Mgr Dubourg. Even though Pauline was not present because she was a woman, her friend and spokesperson, Victor Girodon, who defended her point of view, represented her.  At the time, it would have been extraordinary to see a woman sitting on such a council - Madame Petit was not present, but had her son represent her. What was important was that it was Pauline’s fundraising system that was adopted. This did not seem to shock Pauline who, absent from Lyon at the time, soon accepted the merger of her own association with the new foundation by transferring to it the funds she had received. (Jean Comby, in Documents Épiscopat, op. cit., p. 19; see Catherine Masson, op. cit., pp. 139-140) What is significant is that this an action taken by the laity. 

Although it is a fact that in the 19th century many men and women founded various mission initiatives, none was as important as the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, which succeeded in maintaining its independence, even while cooperating with the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (today, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples). In 1922, it became Pontifical along with two other mission societies, that of the Holy Childhood, now the Missionary Childhood, founded in Paris in 1843 by Bishop de Forbin-Janson, and the Society of Saint Peter the Apostle, created in Caen, France, in 1889 by Jeanne Bigard and her mother Stephanie. Later, in 1916, Paolo Manna (1872-1952), found the Missionary Union in Parma, Italy. In 1956, it became the fourth Pontifical Mission Society.