Pauline Jaricot lived 200 years ago in France and came from a well-to-do merchant family.
After a profound conversion as a teenager, she founded an initiative focused on the development of missions: the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which today has expanded into 4 institutions dedicated to missions.
ARCHBISHOP GIAMPIETRO DAL TOSO
President, Pontifical Mission Societies
Pauline Jaricot's real interest was to bring France back to the Gospel, a France that after the French Revolution had suffered a great secularization.
To promote missions, Jaricot involved her neighbors. Together, they prayed for missionaries and contributed funds. The initiative spread to other countries and there was a year in which she raised over 2.5 million dollars.
Pope Gregory XVI saw her dedication as a concrete example of re-Christianizing the laity in the West. In fact, he even went to visit her.
ARCHBISHOP GIAMPIETRO DAL TOSO
President, Pontifical Mission Societies
She said that she did not want to enter a convent nor did she feel the vocation to religious life because she saw the world as her monastery. I think the message she conveyed was this: the world is a place where one can live one's Christian faith and yet, it is also a place to be evangelized and transformed.
Pauline Jaricot is considered an example of a layperson committed to evangelization. She had a challenging life, marked by illness, but the difficulties did not dampen her missionary zeal.
JRB
KG
