Society of the Propagation of the Faith

The Society for the Propagation of the Faith (Latin: Propagandum Fidei) is an international association coordinating assistance for Catholic missionary priests, brothers, and nuns in mission areas. The society is the oldest of four Pontifical Mission Societies of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Society was founded in Lyon, France, in 1822, by Venerable Pauline Jaricot. The very first collection of the Propagation of the Faith in 1822 supported the vast Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas in the United States, which then extended from the Florida to Canada, as well as the missions in China.

In 1815, Bishop Louis William Valentine Dubourg of New Orleans, Louisiana was in Lyon collecting alms for his diocese, which was in a precarious condition. To a Mrs. Petit, whom he had known in the United States, he expressed the idea of founding a charitable association for the support of Louisiana missions, which suggestion she cordially embraced, but could procure only small alms among her friends and acquaintances.

Separately, in 1820, Pauline Jaricot of Lyon received a letter from her brother, a student at the Seminary of St. Sulpice, in which he described the extreme poverty of the members of the Paris Foreign Missions Society. She conceived the idea of forming an association whose members would contribute one cent a week for the missions. The membership rose to a thousand and the offerings were sent to Asia.

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