(Pauline Jaricot’s House)
42 Montée Saint-Barthélemy, Lyon, France  [ Map ]

At the foot of the Rosary Garden below the Shrine of Our Lady of Fourvière, the house ‘Lorette’ was formerly owned by Blessed Pauline Jaricot (1799-1862) who founded the Society of the Propagation of the Faith (now part of the Pontificial Mission Societies) in 1822 and the Universal Living Rosary Association in 1826.

The Lorette property also includes a chapel dedicated to St Philomena, the child saint to whom Jaricot attributed her miraculous cure from heart disease in 1835. After Jaricot’s death, Lorette was acquired by the Fourvière Foundation in 1862. It was purchased by the Pontifical Mission Societies in 1975.

Significance
Eymard often visited Pauline Jaricot’s house on Fourvière hill, where he encouraged her works of charity and celebrated Mass in the chapel dedicated to St Philomena. He personally identified with the ‘crucible of trials’ which he believed that God put her through.

‘Great works are always founded on the soil of Calvary’, Eymard reminded Jaricot in 1849. He urged her to be confident: ‘So many prayers, so much suffering, so much love cannot remain sterile’.

Pauline Jaricot was beatified on 22 May 2022 during the 200th anniversary year of the foundation of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith.

Further Information
Lorette is open daily between 9.30am – 12.00pm and 2.00pm – 6.00pm (closed on Tuesdays and during January).

In 2005, the National Director of Catholic Mission in Australia, Fr Terry Bell, took an Aboriginal Madonna and Child to France to hang in Lorette. The picture was a copy of the Aboriginal Madonna (‘Virgin Mary and Child’) in St Mary’s Star of the Sea Cathedral, Darwin which was painted by the French artist (of Czech origin) Karel Kupka in the 1960s.

LINKS
Missio UK

The Pontifical Mission Societies