Pauline Jaricot

The work of Pauline Jaricot is immense and rests on an innovative intuition: to associate prayer and concrete action through lay and popular structures. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith (1822): Sensitized by her brother Philéas, a seminarian, to the material needs of missionaries in China and elsewhere, Pauline sought a way to support them. In 1819, she conceived a simple and participatory collection system: the "penny a week." She organized donors into groups of ten people (decades), where each member committed to giving a penny a week for the missions, to recite a daily prayer, and to recruit ten other people to form a new group. This pyramidal and solidarity-based structure was officially established on May 3, 1822, with the founding of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith. The work spread with extraordinary speed throughout the world. In 1922, it would be elevated to the rank of Pontifical Work by Pope Pius XI. The Living Rosary Association (1826): Convinced that missionary action must be supported by incessant prayer, Pauline founded the Living Rosary in 1826. She applied a method similar to that of the Propagation of the Faith: she gathered the faithful into groups of 15 people (corresponding to the 15 mysteries of the Rosary at the time). Each member committed to reciting a decade of the rosary daily while meditating on a specific mystery, thus allowing the group to recite the complete Rosary each day. At her death, the Living Rosary would have more than 2.2 million associates in France. The Daughters of Mary (1831): In 1831, Pauline founded a community of pious laywomen consecrated without a religious habit, the Daughters of Mary, who devoted themselves to works of charity and the spread of the faith. In 1833, she settled with them at the Lorette House, located on the hill of Fourvière, which became the nerve center of her activities. Social commitment and the Rustrel factory (1845): Deeply touched by the misery of the silk workers (the canuts) and eager to promote the dignity of Christian labor, Pauline embarked on social Catholicism. In 1845, she acquired an iron processing factory in Rustrel (Vaucluse), called the Notre-Dame des Anges factory, conceived as a model enterprise where workers and their families would benefit from dignified living and working conditions. A victim of fraud by her managers, the company went bankrupt in 1846 and was liquidated in 1852. Although recognized as a victim by the courts, Pauline chose to personally assume the entirety of the debts to reimburse small savers. Ruined, she spent the last years of her life in absolute poverty, registered as indigent at the Lyon welfare office. She passed away on January 9, 1862, at the Lorette House.

The reputation of holiness of Pauline Jaricot spread rapidly after her death. The diocesan informative process opened in Lyon, and her cause was officially introduced in Rome on June 18, 1930. On February 25, 1963, Pope John XXIII promulgated the decree recognizing the heroic nature of her virtues, conferring upon her the title of Venerable. The miracle accepted for her beatification is the unexplained healing of little Mayline Tran, which occurred in 2012. Then three years old, the little girl choked on food in Nice, which caused a prolonged cardio-respiratory arrest and a vegetative coma deemed irreversible by the doctors at the "Femme Mère Enfant" hospital in Lyon. Faced with this desperate diagnosis, a novena of prayers to Pauline Jaricot was launched by the parents of students at her school and her family. Against all medical expectations, the little girl woke up and recovered perfect health, without any neurological sequelae. After an in-depth investigation conducted by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Francis signed the decree recognizing this miracle on May 26, 2020.

Pauline Jaricot was solemnly beatified on May 22, 2022, at Eurexpo in Lyon. The Eucharistic celebration, which gathered more than 12,000 faithful, was presided over by Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and delegate of Pope Francis. Her liturgical feast is set for January 9, the day of her birth into Heaven. Her mortal remains, initially buried in the Loyasse cemetery, were transferred in 1935 to the church of Saint-Nizier in Lyon, where she rests in a side chapel. Her heart is kept and venerated in the church of Saint-Polycarpe in Lyon.

The spirituality of Pauline Jaricot is characterized by an intimate union between mystical contemplation and apostolic action. Deeply Eucharistic, she drew her strength from the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, writing her treatise 'Infinite Love in the Divine Eucharist' at the age of 23. Her Marian devotion was expressed through the massive distribution of the Living Rosary. She also maintained a deep spiritual friendship with the holy Curé of Ars, Jean-Marie Vianney, who supported her in her trials and held her up as an example to his parishioners. The latter gave her a cross bearing the motto that summarizes her life of abandonment: 'God alone as witness, Mary as support, and then nothing...'. Today, the legacy of Pauline Jaricot is global. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith constitutes the foundation of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS), present in more than 120 countries to support evangelization and aid to the most destitute. Her Lorette House in Lyon, restored, remains a place of pilgrimage and memory dedicated to her work and her spirituality.