October 1st - Paul VI attributes to Pauline Marie Jaricot the intuition, the initiative and the method of the Propagation of the Faith

From November 9 to 12, 1972, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Work for the Propagation of the Faith and the 50th anniversary of its recognition as a pontifical work, an international missionary conference was held in Lyon on the theme “Pontifical missionary works under the sign of apostolic collegiality.” Paul VI addressed a message to the congress dated October 22, 1972, which was read by Cardinal Alexandre Renard in the presence of the 320 participants. According to the Pope, the Pontifical Mission Societies are offered to all Christians as privileged instruments of the Episcopal College united with the Successor of Peter and, with him, responsible for the People of God, which is entirely missionary.

Paul VI presents Pauline Marie Jaricot or Marie-Pauline Jaricot, in the words of Paul VI, as an “authentic daughter of the Church, so radically devoted to the cause of distant missions, and at the same time so preoccupied with the problems of the world. Worker who surrounded him” (La Documentation Catholique, December 3, 1972, No. 1621, p.1056). The Pope earnestly “hopes that, in an atmosphere of joyful fraternity, attentive listening, laborious reflection, living prayer, these International Assizes will bring to the missionary action of the Church the enlightenment proper to generate a new impetus.”

This is the occasion for the Pope to recall that the seed sown in the earth by Marie-Pauline Jaricot has become a great tree. “This young girl knew how to face, from 1819, a pressing need of the Church and to associate the whole People of God with it; his views have proved to be insightful and truly prophetic. Rightly so, the Work for the Propagation of Faith, founded in 1822, today recognises all the part that goes to the intuition, initiative and method of this secular Lyonnaise. And if, with abnegation, she left it to others to develop this work, she was nonetheless, in her own words, ‘the first match to light the fire’.”

But this observation is not enough, explains Paul VI. “We still have to discern the source of this flame. We know how much her missionary zeal was nourished by a deep interior life: she wanted to be completely available to the love of God, with a childhood spirit that prefigured that of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. And this mystical generosity, fruit of a grace from the Savior, was rooted in a whole providential context of events and relationships which helped him to develop this vocation. It enabled him to find and execute concrete and courageous gestures without delay: who does not know the adoption of the ‘penny’ sacrificed each week for the missions, then this brilliant organisation of donors by the tens, by the hundreds, by the thousands? More than many others, finally, she had to meet, accept and overcome in love a sum of disputes, failures, humiliations, abandonments, which gave to her work the mark of the cross and its mysterious fruitfulness. The Lyon conventioneers will recognize, in this dedication to Christ, this sharing of the Church, this effective commitment and this evangelical patience, the essential and irreplaceable characteristics of the apostolate.”

For Paul VI, the seed, modestly thrown into the ground by Marie-Pauline Jaricot, has become a great tree. In fact, the Pope explains, “The Work of the Propagation of the Faith has spread unceasingly, with the Catholic, that is to say universal, concern of all the missions. Today it is organised in more than seventy-five countries from five continents. It is spiritual and material mutual aid in the dimensions of the Church. With the Pontifical Works of Holy Childhood, of Saint Peter the Apostle and of the Missionary Union of the Clergy, linked to the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, it constitutes, without exclusivity, the expression and the privileged instrument of the inalienable mission of the Church: "To spread over all men the clarity of Christ which shines on the face of the Church" (Lumen gentium, n° 1). The great gathering in Lyon will take, we have no doubt, a lively conscience, and we wholeheartedly unite ourselves in its thanksgiving.

Pope Paul VI then offers some ideas to face the global situation of missionary problems. He referred to some grievances formulated against the missionary activities of the Church: lack of religious freedom in certain regions of the world; lack of workers and resources; weakening of the missionary conscience of the Christian people themselves, aggravated by uncertainty, even by heightened criticism; accusation of proselytising incompatible with religious freedom; accusation of the Church of being inattentive to the socio-cultural values of young nations. The Pope also notes various other criticisms: hasty and excessive recourse to the sacraments, an absence of formation of a responsible laity, paternalistic assistance, a Westernisation imposed on the Churches of Asia and Africa, etc.

For the Pope, the mission is neither coercion nor indiscreet propaganda, but active witness. He points out that a non-missionary Christian community is doomed to spiritual suffocation. It also addresses the question of the relations between cultures and Christianity, by inviting the recognition of the stones of expectation contained in the various cultures or religions, not without emphasising evangelisation, but also on development and technical assistance, which should not replace missionary activity. The Pope also insists on the place that must be given to mission days, because they allow Christians to take a fresh look at the missions, to sense the needs and to lead them to “consider local evangelisation and distant evangelisation as integrated in the same missionary pastoral whose unique source is Christ.” It is also an opportunity to awaken more and more diversified truly missionary vocations, priests, men and women religious, members of secular institutes, celibate lay people or households, called to cooperate according to the diversity and complementarity of ministries and spiritual gifts (cf. 1 Cor 12: 4-11).