Childhood and Adolescence

 

• Pauline JARICOT had a happy childhood and adolescence between attentive parents, caring and protective brothers and sisters. At the age of 10 she was sent to boarding school in Fourvière in a small private school where a priest dispensed catechesis. On April 16, 1812, she received the sacraments of confirmation and of communion in Saint John's cathedral.

 

• From 13 to 17 years old, she frequents the exclusive world of silks. She leads a mundane, carefree and festive life between the paternal house, the property of Tassin, Sophie's domain which has become Madame Zacharie PERRIN - rich silk manufacturer - and the castle of Saint Vallier where Marie-Laurence wife of Monsieur CHARTRON, the principal industrial in the local silk industry.

 

• Pauline is beautiful, rich, flirtatious. She has health and reputation. But, says Monsignor CRISTIANI, one of her biographers, there is something serious and tragic about her in the aspect of coquetry and lightness.

 

• On Palm Sunday 1816, Pauline went with her sister Sophie to Saint Nizier church to participate in the Eucharistic celebration. On this day, Father WÜRTZ preaches on “the illusions of vanity, being and appearing”. Pauline feels challenged. She asked the priest for advice, who said to her, "Offer yourself sincerely to Our Lord so that he can accomplish his purposes for you". This day remained in the memory of Pauline as that of her conversion (Biography published by Julia MAURIN in 1892).

 

Conversion

 

• Pauline then breaks with her tastes and her habits. She decides to dress like the silk workers of the Croix-Rousse.

• She works to visit the poor, the prisoners in the prisons, to care for the sick, to take in street children. She helps prostitutes who walk the rue Mercière. She hired a number of them in the Saint Vallier factory run by her brother-in-law.

• On December 25, 1816, Christmas Day, in the Notre-Dame de Fourvière chapel, she made a vow of perpetual chastity and undertook to dedicate her life to God and to others.

• In 1817, Pauline gathered around her some workers in the silk industry to lead a life of prayer and charity. She names them "The Repairers of the heart of Jesus, unknown and despised", auguring a repairing current that will fuel the cult of the Sacred Heart formalized by Pope Leo XIII in 1899.

 

 

 

The work of the Propagation of the Faith

 

• In 1818, Phileas seminarian at Saint Sulpice in Paris asked Pauline for financial aid for the Missions in China, supported by the Fathers of the Foreign Missions of Paris (rue du Bac). It is the birth of the “Weekly Sou” a quest for “hand to hand” that Pauline implements with the “Repairers” and the 200 workers of the Saint Vallier factory.

• In the fall of 1819, Pauline worked out a method of organization which combined material aid and the awakening of spiritual values, the aim of which was to raise awareness of missionary questions by making each faithful a potential actor. It is a question, she writes, of creating dozens of associates with leaders of dozens, the latter gathering in hundreds and then in thousandths. This action will quickly gain followers. The offerings will flow in and will be donated in full to foreign Missions in PARIS. The Missions of America, informed, will join this approach.

 

On May 3, 1822, the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was officially founded in Lyon.

​

​

​

• This has a universal character according to the wish of Mademoiselle JARICOT. Its headquarters are established in Lyon and will be transferred to Rome in 1922, date on which the work will become pontifical under the responsibility of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. It is necessary to underline this fundamental intuition of Pauline JARICOT who introduces and highlights with this first initiative, the role of the laity in the Church.

• Pauline, whose founding quality is not recognized, does not take offense: So much the better, she says, if the work has been taken care of by more expert hands than mine.

• ​

 

• She believes she should stay in charity emergencies as they arise. She then withdrew to write, according to the advice of Father Würtz, in addition to her biography, a short treatise on spirituality entitled "Infinite Love in the Divine Eucharist".

• She lives an inner peace which she expresses in the following way: “A source of peace is to walk behind Jesus, looking at his trace in each action we do, throwing the past into the bosom of his mercy and l 'future in his adorable will to take care of only the moment'.

• Pauline thus opens "the little path of spiritual childhood" that Saint Theresa of the Child Jesus will later develop.

 

 

The work of the Living Rosary

 

• Pauline JARICOT is sensitive to the appeal launched by Pope Leo XII in the jubilee year 1825 denouncing the surge of anticlericalism in France. Affected by the dechristianization of society, she decides to attack the root of the evil. For her, "the only antidote to atheism is the life of prayer".

• It is in this spirit that she founded in 1826, the Work of the Living Rosary according to the same objectives of universality, solidarity, spirituality which animated her and the same method that she used in the Work of the Propagation of the Faith.

• The Rosary consisting of meditation on the life of Christ and the Virgin Mary by reciting 3 rosaries of five dozen, Pauline organizes groups of 15 associates corresponding to the 15 mysteries of the Rosary. She wishes to have her association approved by Rome. A Brief from Pope Gregory XVI officially recognized it in 1831.

• The Work of the Living Rosary will quickly gain followers and actively contribute to Marian renewal, a breeding ground in which several apparitions of the Virgin will intervene.

 

Missionary Childhood

 

• Mademoiselle JARICOT plans to develop what would be for her the Childish Propagation of the Faith. It is the first to make its contribution to the Work of the Holy Childhood, founded by Monsignor de FORBIN-JANSON in 1843, called today Missionary Childhood.

• A study, published in the review "Catholic Missions" of September 1935, highlights "this admirable work which makes recipe and allows thousands of children to be baptized and educated" and the author concludes " Mademoiselle JARICOT was in sort of the Joan of Arc of the Missions ” . Pauline waits "for an opportunity to be given to respond to an urgent need of the Church ".

 

The search for his vocation

 

• In 1831, Pauline lived in the house of Nazareth on the hill of Fourvière. She founded a hospice for poor and elderly women at the corner of the Montée des Chazeaux and Montée Saint Barthélemy.

• That same year, she made a retreat with the Ladies of the Visitation in Avignon where she felt the need to enter religion aspiring to the life of the cloister. The priest, a Jesuit, Father RENAULT dissuaded her, inviting her to remain in the state of a layman "where she would better fulfill the will of God".

 

 

La Maison de Lorette - Seat of the Living Rosary

 

• In 1832, she bought the house of La BREDA, Montée Saint Barthélemy, which she named "Maison de Lorette". She places a statue of Mary above the front door and inscribes on the pediment of the facade "Mary conceived without sin, pray for us".

• She installs a chapel next to her room where she initiates the practice of permanent Eucharistic adoration . She gathers around her a community of pious young girls whom she names " The daughters of Mary" . It makes the House of Lorette, the seat of the Work of the Living Rosary.

 

 

Concern for Christian unity

 

• Miss JARICOT is concerned with the unity of Christians. Every Saturday, in the chapel of Saint Thomas Becket, she organizes a prayer for the rapprochement of the Churches, a sort of prelude to the “Week of prayer for Christian unity” which Father COUTURIER will initiate in 1935, thus tracing a path to ecumenism.

 

​

Pauline's journeys to Rome

 

Pauline, a tried daughter of the Church and appreciated by the successive Popes, will make three trips to Rome:

• In 1835, she visited Pope Gregory XVI who encouraged his action in favor of evangelization and the life of prayer. Sick, she goes on a pilgrimage to MUGNANO which has acquired a certain celebrity following the healings obtained by the intercession of Saint Philomena. Back in Lyon, she built a Chapel on her property, by the Lyon architect Antoine CHENAVARD, in honor of Sainte Philomène.

• In 1839, she was triumphantly received again by Pope Gregory XVI as founder of the Living Rosary and the Propagation of the Faith.

• In 1856, ruined, she asked for help and protection from Pope Pius IX who supported her efforts to reimburse her creditors who supported her in the creation of her Work of Workers. This work will be considered by Cardinal VILLECOURT, in 1849, as " Work of God, work of general interest for the Church ".

 

​

The work of workers or the social commitment of Pauline

 

• The city of LYON was shaken by a revolutionary explosion from July 31 to August 2, 1830 during which Pauline lived and prayed in the chapel of Notre Dame de Fourvière, " offering herself as a victim for France " . The Royal Authorities of the Town Hall quickly capitulated, a provisional mayor was appointed. Calm is reborn in LYON, while in PARIS, King Louis Philippe of Orleans takes power.

 

​

 

In November 1831, a first insurrection of the Canuts was provoked by the refusal of the manufacturers to apply the "minimum tariff of prices in the manner of silk fabrics", an agreement however concluded before the Prefect, on October 25, between workers' delegates and manufacturers' delegates.

​

• On November 21, the Canuts stopped working, gathered with shovels, picks, sticks and some rifles to repel the assaults of the National Guard and General ROGUET who commanded the 7th Military Division. Workers are killed, others are injured. The Canuts alert the population by shouting "to arms, we are killing our brothers". They descend into the peninsula. They are joined by the weavers of Brotteaux and La Guillotière. The masses shout in the street "Au Rhône, les manufacturers". Barricades are erected. Black flags are hoisted at the top of public buildings bearing the motto "Live by working or die by fighting".

 

• Pauline JARICOT takes up the cause for the workers in the silk industry, which puts her at odds with her environment. She approves of their struggle, she shares their convictions. It denounces the misery in which they are kept. As Louis MURON points out in his work "Le chant des canuts" (page 159), "The manufacturer eats when he is hungry, the canut when he has bread".

​​

 

​​

                                                      Casimir PERIER, president of the Council of Ministers, during the first insurrection of the canuts, declared to the Chamber of Deputies, "the workers must know that there is only patience and resignation for them". Mademoiselle JARICOT replies "While it is sometimes necessary to suppress riots and restore order, it is even more necessary and more urgent to remove the causes of the disorder by giving those who suffer the two things which men cannot do. to pass: bread and hope, security and light, which ensures material life and what transfigures it ”. (D. LATHOUD, page 12).

 

• November 22; a bloody fight takes place at the MORAND Bridge. Workers from all neighborhoods join the Canuts. Pauline JARICOT is next to the doctors, she picks up the wounded, helps in first aid. To Mariette, a worker who asks her "how does she manage to stay permanently and without fail with the wounded", she replies " I pray to the Virgin for her to give me strength and I beg her to alleviate the suffering of these men who fought for a just cause ”. (Louis MURON, page 125) .

 

• Mademoiselle JARICOT has the reputation of distributing to anyone who wants, medals representing the Virgin of Fourvière, which she will not fail to do during the whole insurrection. MUGUET, a silk worker, will confide to Henri journalist at the Echo de La Fabrique: "Do you know a little good woman whose name is Pauline Jaricot? I know her a little, she is a saint. She prays and makes people pray for us. In November, she was with the wounded and the dying day and night. It has merit because in addition it is not of our condition. She is from a bourgeois family ”. (Louis MURON, page 254)

 

• Pauline, again, plans to die a martyr, for the salvation of LYON. She will intervene personally to avoid a violent confrontation between royal troops and workers in struggle, with the means at her disposal namely: "throw on the soldiers' passage, a multitude of medals of the Virgin and leaflets bearing these words" Mary was conceived without sin ”. His intervention will prove to be effective. Indeed, agreements will be made at the Town Hall, between manufacturers and workers in the silk industry. The latter will obtain commitments to improve their working conditions.

 

• In April 1834, the negotiated agreements not having been respected, a new insurrection of the canuts will degenerate into bloody riots. Pauline, sick, surrounded by her companions, took refuge, with the Tabernacle, in an underground shelter dug in the park of her property. For three days and three nights, she will remain in prayer.

 

Pauline's reflections

 

• But these events will deeply challenge him. She writes: "As the industry practices replacing human arms with machines, the virtuous worker who knew and could save money for the future knows only the embarrassment". She continues: “We must strive to improve the condition of the working class. We must restore to the worker his dignity as a man, by wresting him from the slavery of relentless work, his dignity as a father by making him rediscover the charms of the family, his dignity as a Christian by procuring him the hopes of religion ”.

• In an address to the Holy Church, she denounces the three tyrannies which oppress the working class, namely: "greed, which refuses a fair salary, impiety, which requires Sunday work, extravagance, which forces reserves of shy modesty ”.

 

• Pauline JARICOT, with the faith and the sense of evangelization that inspire her, wishes to implement “ a network of solidarity, by giving a first group of workers the means to regenerate themselves to enable them to deliver their brothers and the whole working world ” : a prophetic view!

We find Pauline's intuitions in the Catholic action movements subsequently created: in 1886, Catholic Action for French Youth (ACJF); in 1927, the Action Catholique Ouvrière (ACO). In this wake, Pope Leo XIII will promulgate his encyclical RERUM NOVARUM which will give the bases of the social doctrine of the Church, in May

​

• Pauline JARICOT believes that she found in this project to operate a factory "an unexpected and providential means of realizing her noblest and most useful goals in the social field".

• In addition, she explains to Mother Saint Laurent, superior of the Congregation of the Ursulines, her lifelong friend, she could "provide work for good and honest workers who would be paid generously, would have sanctifying regulations, education children being a priority. "

• On September 8, 1845, Pauline JARICOT acquired this factory in which she invested her entire fortune (700,000 Francs) and of which she was the main shareholder.

 

• The business normally operates for eight months. It employs around a hundred employees who live there with their families. Around the two blast furnaces are found the foundry and sheet metal workshops, the rolling mills, the warehouse for cast iron and coal. On site, iron ore deposits are mined.

• Pauline has the Notre Dame des Anges Chapel restored where Mass is celebrated every Sunday. The workers express their gratitude to Pauline.

• The subscriptions of small savers, flock, confident in the fame of Mademoiselle JARICOT.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

The end of a business

• In May 1846, the two businessmen who became managers of the company were imprisoned for embezzlement. They are sentenced a few months later. Social assets are devolved to Pauline who surrounds herself with trusted collaborators and tries to turn the company around. But the legal proceedings in which she had to engage to assert her rights and her honesty against those, she says, "who have abused her faith", as well as the amount of the bills still to be honored, are right for her perseverance.

 

• On May 12, 1852, the RUSTREL blast furnace factory was to be sold on "mad auction" for 120,000 francs. In the meantime, Pauline JARICOT has signed a commitment to reimburse all the shareholders. She believes that "loyalty and honor dictate her duty to recover from this ruin, all those who subscribed because of her name". The lawyer Paul DUQUAIRE points out that Mademoiselle JARICOT was not legally bound to this engagement because she was not morally responsible.

• In addition, according to David LATHOUD, one of his biographers, "the documents attest that Pauline JARICOT did not go bankrupt, that the commercial courts did her justice. She was mistaken in the choice of his representative following the recommendations of those in whom Pauline JARICOT could have the most confidence. She was only a victim. "

 

Pauline, in poignant terms, addresses God “can you hear me my God from the bottom of this well where the silence of a sort of burial surrounds me. I am on a pilgrimage on this earth as if I were abandoned in a desert under a burning sky, without shade and without water, will you let me die. But nothing can shake my confidence in you ”.

 

 

The toll road for access to the Notre-Dame de Fourvière Chapel

 

• Pauline has the idea of ​​creating a toll road across her property starting from Montée Saint Barthélemy and ending on the Fourvière terrace. "This toll," she writes, "could be a precious windfall that would allow me to pay my debts in the long run."

 

 

• Pauline takes the necessary steps, she manages to erect this path which climbs the hill and ends at the foot of the Chapelle de Fourvière. It was opened on December 8, 1852, when pilgrims flocked to pray to the Virgin Mary on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

 

 

 

Pauline's Pardon

 

• Pauline, deeply affected by the betrayals of some, the misunderstandings of others, buries her suffering in the Cross of Christ, " Light of our life " in her words.

• She writes to Mademoiselle DEYDE a benefactress, "the mystery which envelops my business is that of the Cross because it was necessary that God had the design to attach me to it to complicate the events which made a Job of your poor obligate".

• And as if echoed, resounds this word of the Curé of ARS who says in the pulpit: "I know someone who has many crosses and very heavy ones, and who carries them with great love, it is Mademoiselle JARICOT" .

• In a prayer to Saint Joseph, dated March 19, 1855, Pauline expresses the feelings of "true and whole forgiveness which animates her towards all those who, she says, have offended, afflicted, tormented her. That if my evils, she continues, are of some merit, they will be the first to reap the fruits for their salvation and even for their temporal happiness ”.

 

 

 

 

 

Pauline JARICOT in total misery is obliged to register at the charity office in her neighborhood.

 

Sick, she continues to help the poorest, supported by her Daughters of Mary.

 

In the early hours of January 9, 1862, she died. Her relatives, the silk workers, canuts and canuses, parade her to the Loyasse cemetery where she is buried in the family vault.

 

 

• On June 13, 1881, Pope Leo XIII, in a Declaration in the Church of Saint Peter in Rome, rehabilitated it "It was she who organized the beautiful Work of the Propagation of the Faith. (…) It was she who propagated wonderfully and made incessant the invocation to the Mother of God. We still owed this pious Virgin the beginnings of the Work which aims at the regeneration of workers (…) to which Pauline JARICOT had devoted the ample resources of her heritage ”.

 

If Cardinal DECOURTRAY in 1986 wished, in his preface to the work of Father Georges NAÏDENOFF, that "Pauline JARICOT be without delay on the altars", Pope John Paul II, when he came to Lyon in 1999, evoking "the Work undertaken by Pauline JARICOT to spread the Gospel to the ends of the earth," praised "this exceptional vocation which embellishes a long tradition of witnesses of Christ going back to the martyrs of Lyons and Saint Irénée "

Colette TEMPERE, January 2014.

 

"On Tuesday, May 26, 2020, Pope Francis authorized the publication of the miracle decree attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Pauline-Marie Jaricot, which decree was published today". The announcement of her next beatification recognizes the story of a woman who has shown great imagination in the service of the Gospel: “This day that the Lord is doing is a day of joy! “

"Deeply rooted in prayer, Pauline was able to invent the first missionary social network," underline the Pontifical Missionary Works of France. (Agenzia Fides 06/03/2020)

 

Any pardon obtained through the intercession of Pauline must be reported to:

Propagation of the Faith, 12 rue Sala, F-69002 - Lyon.

​

NB. All of Pauline's quotes can be found in her writings, listed on the Bibliography page.

They engage only the editors of the pages.  

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​