In 1822 Pauline Marie Jaricot (1799-1862), with just a few friends in her native Lyons, founded the Association for the Propagation of the Faith. Lyons was the scene of so many powerful initiatives at that time; their parish priests were utterly committed to the overseas mission of the Church and fostered vocations across the whole spectrum of Church life. Pauline Jaricot in effect founded the biggest lay missionary movement in the history of the Church and it still thrives and grows across the world.
In 1866 when Cardinal Vaughan (1832-1903) founded the Mill Hill Missionaries, he did so convinced that charity begins at home as does faith and hope. He also knew even more clearly that if it stays there it becomes atrophied and useless. He believed that the urge for mission is not dependent on sending one’s surplus but on sharing one’s gift of faith. He had a similar motivation when founding the Children’s Rescue Society – that the most vulnerable have the right to be brought up in their faith, not simply to be rescued from human poverty.
These two founders and their successors have been at the forefront of the Church’s mission outreach ever since, ensuring that everyone in their own unique way can share in spreading the Good News.
The life of the great Cardinal Vaughan is well known: founder of Mill Hill, the Catholic Truth Society, and Westminster Cathedral. Most Catholics in England and Wales know his name if not all his works. Pauline Jaricot deserves to be better known. Although a ‘venerable’ few people in this country have heard of her, even those who adopt a Red Box. Do they know, for instance, that Pope Gregory XVI came to her sick bed to thank her for all she had done for the Church?
Who could have foreseen that the seeds of faith and charity sown by these two inspired, holy people might one day blend? The founders never met, although Fr Vaughan knew of Pauline’s work, and were separated by gender, nationality, culture, and calling.
At sixteen Herbert decided to study for the priesthood, relinquishing the great estates that would be his to govern as the eldest son of a family of ‘the gentry’, and upsetting his father in the process. He was ordained early at twenty-two because his health was frail. At sixteen, Pauline was cured of a serious physical and mental illness and experienced a conversion. She had no wish to enter a convent; her apostolate lay in the world. Shockingly, she gave up the trappings of wealth to work in the ‘incurables ward’ of the local hospital. Later she went among the mill girls who worked in her family’s factory, gained their friendship and soon organised prayers and collections for the foreign missions, at the time, the Foreign Missionary Society of Paris.
Surprisingly, the idea of collecting ‘a penny a week for the missions’ came from Protestants in England. However, Pauline developed a plan of having groups of ten people, each organising another ten, and each of these another ten, to pray and collect money for the missions – the beginning of the APF. The same system, now based around the Red Box, with circles of promoters in all the parishes in England and Wales flourishes today. Sadly, the direction of the APF was taken away from Pauline by people who considered that it was an unthinkable position for a young girl to hold. She suffered greatly at this, but made no protest. Pauline was only officially recognised as the founder of the APF in 1919.
Fr Herbert’s approach to raising money for his dream of founding the first Missionary College in England was to embark on a two-year begging tour of the Americas. He raised £11,000 and so began the foundation of his Mill Hill Missionaries. In 1936 the Bishops of England and Wales, recognising the separate charisms of APF and Mill Hill, asked them to combine their energies in the Red Box project. In this new partnership were found the essential elements necessary for missionary activity: prayer, sacrifice and promotion of the missionary spirit among the People of God.
We wish our colleagues in Mill Hill and APF well in the anniversary year of the Red Boxes. Long may you continue to remind us of the things that are most important and encourage us to serve them.
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