October 5 - Launch of the weekly penny collection for the Propagation of the Faith

Pauline was convinced of the importance and necessity of praying for the missions and missionaries. In 1817, she organized the first prayer circles and collections for the missions. In the spring of 1818, at the age of 19, she launched the initiative of “one penny a week” for the Propagation of the Faith among 200 young women workers and, in 1819, a plan for a regular collection for the Propagation of the Faith was established. On May 3, 1822, she founded the Association for the Propagation of the Faith. She inscribed hundreds of associates and leaders to effectively organize and implement the collections. At all levels, daily prayer was united with the weekly offerings for the missions. In the autumn of 1819, a great missionary movement, based on a solid spirituality, soon spread beyond the borders of France. Indeed, the initiative burgeoned even more after the official foundation of the association in 1822, multiplying the pennies, from hand to hand. Many people joined this movement, prayed for missionaries, the success of their missions and participated in the collection of financial means to support missionary activities.

Organized into an association by Pauline, under the name of Reparatrixes of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, her worker friends proved to be very zealous for the mission, thus stimulating Christians to be missionaries in various ways, by articulating prayers for the missions and offerings to support them. Pauline and her brother Philéas joined forces to create the association of the Propagation of the Faith, because she was always well disposed and devoted to everything that could interest the cause of the Faith. Was she inspired by what had long been practiced in England by the Anabaptists or by other Christians anxious to support the missionaries? Pauline Jaricot had learned of the existence of this organization to support the Missions. In England, the idea was to invite all classes of society, even the poor, to set aside a penny each week for the cause of the mission. Societies, stores, and educational institutions established trunks where each person could put his or her weekly penny for the Missions. The organization is effective; indeed, the smallest contributions together will produce resources that will constitute important means for propagating the Gospel. Having the penny a week idea was not enough however; it had to be put into practice. In fact, it was a matter of “asking God for the conversion of unbelievers, the perseverance of Christians living among them, and the prosperity of establishments destined to propagate the Faith” (David Lathoud of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Marie-Pauline Jaricot, op. cit., p. 92).

All these ideas will gradually come together in that of the Propagation of the Faith. It is necessary to be animated by zeal for the Propagation of the Faith and to respond to the invitation of the Directors of the Rue du Bac, expressed in their brochure published in 1817, to pray for the Missions and to offer every Friday one's good works for the conversion of non believers. Pauline grafted almsgiving onto the prayer. Every Friday, after the “Memorare” and the Invocation of St. Francis Xavier, one of the group would pass by begging for a penny or two for the abandoned children of China. The Propagation of the Faith and Holy Childhood were thus linked from the beginning in Pauline's heart. In Saint-Vallier, as in other cities such as Nancy, Metz, Le Havre, Rennes or Bitche, the correspondents of the rue du Bac superimposed, as in Lyon, on the association of prayers a sort of weekly penny association. Each group sent its Friday collections to Paris. These results, scattered and sometimes intermittent, without any guarantee that they could stop tomorrow. The illness or death of one person could stop the collection.

Philéas did not hide from Pauline the apprehensions some missionaries had regarding the shortcomings of the organization.  Along with prayers for missionaries and their missions, Pauline added a Friday collection, whenever possible. She thus included charity (one or two pennies a week) to the spiritual work she initiated in support of the missions. The collection in groups of 12 was only conceived in 1819 as the definitive form of the Association of the Propagation of the Faith. It ensured the success of the endeavour by guaranteeing a notable part of its income, an idea that Pauline would call “the plan of the Propagation of the Faith”. On a cool autumn evening in 1819, while sitting by the hearth, Pauline herself expressed astonishment at the simplicity of her idea of “a penny a week collected by tens, hundreds and their divisions. She suddenly had the intuition of the definitive plan for the Propagation of the Faith.

Pauline is the true founder of the Society. She is the one who conceived the plan and first launched its program. She would say to those who wanted to eliminate her from any links to the Society, “I gave birth to this Work by making known and executing the said plan, and by having the Superior of the Foreign Missions give the first funds of this nascent Society... I have suffered, Gentlemen; and this privilege cannot be disputed with me on an equal footing by any of those who have administered this Society since 1822, except by those who have been unjustly excluded from the Council... Gentlemen, to my title of foundress, I can, without lying, add that of nurturer of the Society; for three years I supported the zeal of my associates, by communicating to them the contents of letters sent to me by my brother... These letters were like the first Annals of the Propagation of the Faith. " (David Lathoud of the Augustinians of the Assumption, Marie-Pauline Jaricot, op. cit., pp. 97-98)

It was Pauline Jaricot who invented and first put into effect the collection by tens. Each of the persons gathered was invited to give a penny a week and to pray for the Missions, then to look for ten other persons (ten) who would also give a penny each week, and so on, from one to the next, as many as could be found. Was the Propagation of the Faith first a private initiative of Pauline Marie Jaricot, helped by her Reparatrixes? It is difficult to answer this question. What is certain is that it seemed important, not to create several particular associations, one to support, for example, the Foreign Missions and another to support the Missions in Louisiana or the missionaries of Sulpice of America, but to set up a single one, for all the Catholic missions throughout the whole world.

It is also important to note the role of Bishop Dubourg in the formal organization and registration of the Society.  His Vicar General, Fr. Angelo Inglesi, along with Madame Petit, Didier Petit, Victor Girodon, Benoît Coste, André Terret, Louis-François de Villiers and others – “the most important and most considered Christians of the city” – who would support the administrative organization of the Society and in its official birth on May 3, 1822. (See Catherine Masson, Pauline Jaricot. 1799-1862. Biographie, Paris, Le Cerf, 2019, p. 139 and 141).

Twelve participants will gather for a meeting that will have historical importance. Philéas Jaricot was then in Paris and Pauline Jaricot, ill, in Saint-Vallier (see Catherine Masson, op. cit., p. 140). Even in good health, Pauline would not have been invited because "young girls at that time do not deliberate with mature men, with important situations in the city! Mme Petit herself was not there, but represented by her son." (See Catherine Masson, op. cit., p. 140) Even before this date, Pauline and Philéas had already embraced the desire for universality (See Catherine Masson, op. cit., p. 137). It was not easy to manage the expansion of the work. “Philéas therefore hoped for a regular organization and counted on Benoît Coste”. On December 29, 1821, he wrote to Girodon: "Mr. Coste will, I hope, soon take the matter of the Foreign Missions into his own hands." (Catherine Masson, op. cit., p. 137). It should be noted that the idea of the collection was indeed Pauline's, but the entire administrative organization came from the Society and its principal actors. By 1821, the Work had about 2,000 members and, in December 1822, the total sum collected since the beginning was 8,050.30 francs. St. Francis Xavier was chosen as patron saint.