At Mauriac in the Auvergne in France, Blessed Catherine Jarrige, virgin, who, as a member of the Third Order of Saint Dominic, was renowned for aiding the poor and the sick, and who, in the time of the French Revolution, defended priests by every means from the seditious searchers and visited those shut up in prison.
Lifespan: 1754–1836
Beatified: 24 November 1996 by Pope John Paul II
Memoria liturgica: 4 July
She Gave Her Whole Life to the Service of God and Neighbour
Catherine Jarrige was born on 4 October 1754 in the Auvergne (or Cantal) in the south-east of France, in the hamlet of Doumis, parish of Chalvignac, then in the diocese of Clermont, now in the diocese of Saint-Flour.
The last of seven children, she had three brothers and three sisters: a large family of poor farmers. Their home was a single ground-floor room and a hayloft that served also as sleeping quarters. She lived the hard life of a country child — work in the fields and in the house. She never attended school, but she learned to read, for later she would have her prayer book and the rule of the Dominican Third Order. She was a joyful, spontaneous, mischievous, and playful child. Soon, however, at the age of nine, her parents, on account of their poverty, sent her into service with wealthier families; she served a succession of employers with uncommon fidelity, industry, and intelligence. Around the age of twelve she received her First Communion, becoming more serious and fervent in prayer.
At thirteen she lost her mother, and we can well imagine how profoundly that bereavement marked her adolescence. As she grew she learned the trade of lacemaker, and at the age of twenty she took up residence in Mauriac together with two of her sisters.
She also had a great passion for the traditional dance of that rural region, the bourrée, and never missed an occasion to take part in it. She renounced it immediately and entirely when she understood that the Lord was calling her to his service: that renunciation was one of the greatest sacrifices of her life.
God alone was henceforth her song and her joy. She retained the dialect diminutive by which she had long been known — Catinon — to which was now added Menette, meaning “little nun.” The menettes were laywomen who lived in the world according to the spirit of the religious family to which they had attached themselves.
Making a promise of chastity, Catherine chose the Third Order of Saint Dominic — perhaps because she bore the name of the great saint of Siena, or because the parish priest of Mauriac, who was also Superior of the local Dominican convent of sisters, had introduced her to the Dominican family; but there is no doubt that she was drawn by the evangelical and apostolic spirit of Saint Dominic.
Was not the service of the poorest the best way to proclaim the Gospel? Having become a daughter of Saint Dominic through her definitive Profession in the Third Order, Catinon-Menette set to work. For sixty years the poor, the sick, the orphaned, and all the unfortunate of the Mauriac district were her true masters, for in them she discerned the suffering Face of Christ: she served them, fed them, cared for them, and clothed them as she would have cared for and fed Christ himself. She supported herself by her own work, then spent part of her days begging from prosperous households in order to relieve the poor.
With a glance and a smile she would show the two large pockets of her apron and say cheerfully: “Fill them up, fill them up!” or: “Don’t worry — I shall come back again!” When she came upon a poor, orphaned, or suffering child she could not resist: she would bring him to her own house or to the home of friendly neighbours, refresh him, clothe him, and give him everything she had before sending him on his way.
Among the sick she played the role of nurse and spiritual companion, for she was concerned at once with the healing of bodies and of souls. She was truly the menette of the poor, but she became also the menette of priests during the sorrowful period of the French Revolution (1789–1799).
From the early months of 1791, priests who had refused to take the oath to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy were driven from their pastoral duties, forbidden to preach or teach, and discriminated against in every way. When the Revolution reached the Cantal region in earnest, Catinon engaged herself in countless ways to assist the clandestine clergy who had remained faithful to the authority of the Church.
She found hiding places in the nearly inaccessible mountain caves of the Ausedel and the Dordogne, in houses, barns, and farmsteads. For eighteen months she sheltered two priests in her own home, knowing that she risked, as they did, the penalty of death should they be discovered.
She climbed and descended the rough mountain paths, by night as by day, in summer as in winter, to bring the ministers of God food, clothing, and the necessaries for celebrating the Eucharist and the other Sacraments. She accompanied the twenty-eight-year-old Abbé François Filiol to the guillotine and gathered his blood, as the first Christians had gathered the blood of the martyrs. She herself, the following year, was arrested and brought before a tribunal, but was released for want of evidence.
The courage that God’s Spirit bestows on strong souls sustained and guided her at every step.
When the revolutionary decade had passed, she continued to assist the clergy in rebuilding the parish of Mauriac, dedicated to Our Lady of Miracles. She continued her work for the most disadvantaged, including visiting prisoners and arranging for the burial of the abandoned, while also tending the sick at the hospital of Mauriac. At the age of eighty-two, after a brief illness, God called her to himself at ten o’clock on Monday, 4 July 1836.
Her body was clothed in the Dominican habit, and an immense crowd came to pay their respects; even the Gazette de France took notice. Now proclaimed Blessed by the Church as well, Catinon-Menette dances her eternal feast before the One who loves a cheerful giver, not forgetting all those who still turn to her to be healed in soul and body.
She was proclaimed Blessed by Pope John Paul II on 24 November 1996.