June 12, 2022 - "Blessed Pauline Jaricot"

The Pontifical Association of the Holy Childhood, a Catholic children’s association for the benefit of the foreign missions, was frequently promoted when I was a grade school student.  We were encouraged to purchase and to use Christmas seals from the Holy Childhood Association on our Christmas cards and Christmas correspondence.  Through the Holy Childhood Association I first came to learn about a remarkable French woman named Pauline Jaricot.  As of May 22, 2022, she is now known as Blessed Pauline Jaricot (1799-1862).
 
Pauline was born in Lyon on July 22, 1799, in the wake of the French Revolution and six months before Napoleon Bonaparte seized control of the French government. The area around Lyon was an important center of resistance again the Revolution.  Pauline was the youngest of seven children.  Because her father was a factory owner, the family lived in prosperity in the center of Lyon, near to Saint-Nizier Church.
 
One of the priests that she met as a child had a great influence in her life was St. Jean-Marie Vianney, the Curé of Ars.  Her parents had a house in the country, in Tassin, near Lyon, within the parish of Dardilly where Vianney was the Associate Pastor.  Sometimes he would come for lunch at their country house on a Sunday afternoon, until he was appointed as Pastor at Ars.  St. Jean Vianney maintained a friendship with the Jaricot family.  In fact, in 1859, in the yeat he died, St. John Vianney offered a cross to Pauline while saying to her:  “God alone as witness, Jesus Christ as model, Mary as support, and then nothing, nothing but love and sacrifice.”
 
When Pauline was seventeen, she listened to a homily being preached in Saint-Nizier Church that shook her to the core.  Up to the point she had lived a rather lukewarm Christian life.  After listening to that sermon, she prayed and reflected with the result that she took a vow of perpetual virginity in a small chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary on the hill of Fourvieve, a district of Lyon lying west of the old town. 
 
One day when she was praying she heard in her heart Jesus lamenting the ingratitude of humanity.  In response to this she created a parish group known as the Réparatrices du Coeur de Jésus méconnu et méprisé (Women who devoted themselves in prayer to make reparation for their sins and the sins of humanity and to console the heart of Jesus unknown and despised).  One day Pauline heard some disturbing news from friends of one of her brothers, Philéas, who was a seminarian in Parish.  The Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, founded in 1663 to evangelize Asia, was in serious financial straits.  With other members of her group she began to collect money for the Society every Friday in the streets of Lyon. 

This was the beginning of what is now the Pontifical Society of the Propagation of the Faith, which is now the oldest of four Pontifical Mission Societies (an umbrella group of Catholic missionary societies under the pope’s authority). Pauline’s response to the troubles faced by the Parish Foreign Mission Society is a great example of God using an ordinary person to do extraordinary things.
 
Pauline’s life also illustrates another important lesson.  Saints are not perfect and can make mistakes.  Appalled by the condition of Lyon’s workers, Pauline offered to buy a factory in 1845 that she hoped would serve as a model Christian enterprise.  Unfortunately Pauline was swindled and the project was a great failure.  She spent the rest of her life trying to pay off the debts of those she had convinced to invest alongside her.  Her reputation diminished greatly and at the end of her life she was included in the list of the poor of the city of Lyon.  She died almost alone in 1862.
 
Pauline is best known for the organizations that she founded.  Hopefully her recent beatification will draw attention to her very deep spiritual life, marked by devotion to the Holy Eucharist, the Cross of Christ, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the divine will, and unfailing hope in God.
 
Blessed Pauline Jaricot, pray for us!
 
Until next week,
Fr. John