Pauline Jaricot and the Rosary

Extract

Research made in connection with the impending canonisation of Pauline Jaricot, the French girl who is perhaps best known as the foundress of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, has brought to light an interesting chapter in the history of the practice of saying the rosary. A little more than a century ago the seventeen-year-old daughter of a Lyons silk-merchant was inspired to start an association which would promote prayer and almsgiving for the conversion of the heathen. The humble effort which begun among her father’s work-girls spread rapidly thanks to the zeal and organizing ability of this would-be missionary. Her system was simplicity itself: a short prayer each day and alms of a sou a week, the members to be grouped in dizaines, centaines and milles; and the widespread success did much to rehabilitate the fortunes of the French missionary societies who had been reduced to inactivity by the upheavals of the revolution and the Empire.