Pauline Marie Jaricot, the French laywoman who started the Society for the Propagation of the Faith at age 23, is an excellent role model, both for young Catholics trying to find their way in the church, and for lay missionaries and their supporters.

So said Sister Madge Karecki, director of the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Office for Mission Animation and Education. The office celebrated Jaricot’s life Jan. 9 with a day-long event that included presentations, a panel discussion and a Mass on the 150th anniversary of Jaricot’s death.

The event aimed to raise awareness about her life and hold her up as an example, said Sister Madge, a Sister of St. Francis of the Third Order of St. Joseph.

“She was a young French woman who had a vision of mission that took in the entire world,” Sister Madge said.

Oblate Father Andrew Small, director of the National Office of the Pontifical Mission Societies, started off the day with a presentation on Jaricot’s life. Born in 1799, she grew up in post-revolution France, at a time when the country was expanding its empire and the church was reeling.

Jaricot was the youngest of eight children in an affluent family. She suffered a fall and her life was in danger when she was 15 years old; her mother, after reportedly praying to ask God to take her life instead of her daughter’s, died, and Pauline recovered.

“She was quite the socialite and whatnot,” Small said, until she heard a homily at age 17 that led to a personal conversion. After that “the silk hat felt heavy on her head.” She took to wearing purple because she hated the color and refused to look at her image in a mirror.

She also started to collect money to support missionaries, with the encouragement of her brother, who was then in the seminary of St. Sulpice.

She organized circles of factory workers, who would gather each day to pray and once a week offer a sou — a coin worth very little. The leaders of each circle would meet in their own groups of 10, and so on. “She was clearly the consummate organizer,” Small said.

By 1822, the network was established as the Society of the Propagation of the Faith.

She did not win universal acclaim. The vicar general of the diocese of Lyons referred to her mission collections as “unauthorized work.” Not long after the society was founded, the church authorities pushed her out and took the society over.

That didn’t change her faith, and she went on to found the Living Rosary and to visit the poor and the sick. When she died, she was in debt after being swindled of money she had raised for the poor. Before dying, she applied for help to the church, reminding officials that she had founded the Society of the Propagation of the Faith. They told her she was not the foundress.

“She was rejected, she was put out, she was ignored and she was erased from the history books,” Small said. It was not until more than 100 years after her death that Pope John XXIII acknowledged her role when he declared her venerable.

Franciscan Sister Frances Cunningham, director of World Missions Ministries in the Diocese of Milwaukee, said Jaricot offers many lessons that apply today, especially her insistence first on forming relationships with poor people, and in having a heart for the entire world.