Priest: Jean Vianney, the humblest of men

The Holy Father has chosen to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé of Ars by creating a Year for Priests.

LONDON (Catholic Herald UK) - By Forty-six years after his death a steady stream of people daily files past a tomb in St Peter's, paying their respects to a pope who gloried in his peasant origins. Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli spent his youth and his holidays from the seminary working alongside his brothers in their fields in the Italian village of Bergamo. The last thing that he ever expected was that one day he would become Pope John XXIII and would summon the Church to gather from the ends of the earth for the Second Vatican Council.

In 1959 "Good Pope John" wrote an encyclical, Sacerdotii Nostri Primordia, about a French parish priest who had died 90 years previously in 1869. An intriguing coincidence is that, three years later and only a few months before his own death on June 3 1963, Pope John XXIII proclaimed the heroic virtues of Pauline Marie Jaricot, the foundress of Association for the Propagation of the Faith (APF) and sanctioned the start of the process of her beatification.

Those seemingly unrelated facts are actually very significant. The parish priest was St Jean Vianney, the Curé d'Ars, who was the close friend and spiritual director of Pauline Jaricot, of whom he said: "I know someone who knows how to accept the Cross, and a heavy Cross, and how to bear it with love! It is Mlle Jaricot."

Jean Vianney, the humblest of men, listening to his near neighbour from Lyons learned from the foundress of the Living Rosary and the APF as she did from him. In spite of their social disparity the daughter of the owners of a silk factory grew up less than four miles away from the son of a poor shepherd and, a mere 13 years younger, also experienced the aftermath of the French Revolution. They both knew great suffering, poverty, criticism and hardship as a result of their complete dedication to God and the Church, in more ways than one spoke the same language. The Curé said of his own ministry: "If I had known when I came to the parish of Ars what I would have to suffer, the fear of it would certainly have killed me."

Pope John XXIII said of Jean Vianney: "His parish numbered only 230 people when he arrived (and was) profoundly changed. One recalls that in that village there was a great deal of indifference and very little religious practice among the men. The bishop had warned Jean Vianney: 'There is not much love of God in that parish. You will put some there.' But quite soon, far beyond his own village, the Curé becomes 'the pastor of a multitude' coming from the entire region, from different parts of France and from other countries."

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As a former spiritual director of the Pontifical Roman Seminary, known for his early and lifelong appreciation of accepting the advice of others on spiritual matters, John XXIII could not fail to have been aware of, and to have been touched by, the influence of a near contemporary. After all, Jean Vianney died a mere 22 years before Roncalli's birth and there were too many similarities between them for the pope not to have noticed: peasant farmers, early yearning to help others to grow closer to God, army, seminary, priesthood. John XXIII also appreciated that "the most unlearned but most devout seminarian in Lyons" eventually became an internationally acclaimed example of holiness.

Similarly, the pope knew of Pauline Jaricot long before he approved her Cause for beatification. In France alone, when Pauline died, she had gathered 2,250,000 people prepared to pray for and support missionaries. Approving her Cause in 1962 John XXIII said that it was Pauline Jaricot who "thought of the APF, who conceived it and made it an organised reality". He knew that there were already countless priests across the mission world who were completely dependent for their support on the work of Pauline's burgeoning band of helpers.

On March 16 Pope Benedict XVI declared: "The missionary dimension of a priest arises from his sacramental configuration to Christ the head. Priests must be present, identifiable and recognisable - for their judgment of faith, personal virtues and attire - in the fields of culture and of charity, which have always been at the heart of the Church's mission."

The Holy Father has chosen to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of the Curé of Ars by creating a Year for Priests, to commence on June 19 and to finish on June 19 2010, when the simple Frenchman will be created not merely the patron saint of parish priests, but the patron of all priests worldwide.

Pauline Jaricot and John XXIII will raise a heavenly cheer at the announcement. To give the last word to the pope and the priest:"Almost everyone knows his answer to the priest who complained to him that his apostolic zeal was bearing no fruit: 'You have offered humble prayers to God, you have wept, you have groaned, you have sighed. Have you added fasts, vigils, sleeping on the floor, castigation of your body? Until you have done all of these, do not think that you have tried everything.' "

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Sister Janet Fearns FMDM is the communications coordinator of Missio (www.missio.org.uk)

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