JARICOT, PAULINE

Foundress of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith; b. Lyons, France, July 22, 1799; d. Lyons, Jan. 9,1862. On Christmas Day 1816 she took a perpetual vow of virginity. At the age of 17 she founded the Union of Prayers in Reparation to the Sacred Heart, an organization of servant girls. It was among them that she first solicited contributions for the foreign missions. In 1820 she formed an Association to Aid the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, and in 1826 the Association of the Living Rosary. Each member was assigned a certain decade to say daily. This association also spread good books and distributed articles of piety. She founded the Loretta, a home for working girls, promoted the Association of the Holy Childhood, and engaged in other apostolic works for women of all classes.

Her main preoccupation, however, was to help the foreign missions through the alms and prayers of the faithful. In 1822 Angelo Inglesi, Vicar-General of New Orleans, came to Lyons to raise funds for his mission. He gathered a group of 12 laymen into an association. Because of Pauline Jaricot's success in such work, this association joined with her existing group to form the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (May 3, 1822). Pauline Marie Jaricot is recognized as the foundress. At the time it was called also the Missionary Society of Lyons or the St. Francis Xavier Society. There was much discussion of the fund-raising technique. Pauline's, a simple system through which a promoter found ten persons to contribute a cent a week and who turned these funds over to another person in charge of ten promoters, and so on, was adopted. In 1822 the society collected more than $4,000.

The cause of her canonization was introduced in 1930. On Feb. 25, 1963, the Congregation of Rites declared that she had practiced virtue to a heroic degree.

Bibliography: j. maurin, Pauline Marie Jaricot …, tr. e. sheppard (New York 1906). d. lathoud, Marie-Pauline Jaricot, 2 v. (Paris 1937). j. jolinon, Pauline Jaricot (Paris 1956). k. burton, Difficult Star: The Life of Pauline Jaricot (New York 1947). m. cristiani, Marie-Pauline Jaricot (Paris 1961). j. servel, ed., Un Autre visage: Textes inédits de Pauline Jaricot (Lyons 1961). g. gorÉe, Pauline Jaricot, une laïque engagée (Paris 1962).

[j. a. mccoy]