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In a letter made public yesterday the Holy Father nominated Cardinal Paul Poupard, emeritus president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, as his special envoy at the concluding celebrations of the Jubilee Year dedicated to the Venerable Servant of God Pauline Jaricot, the 150th anniversary of her death and the 50th anniversary of the decree of her heroic virtues, to be held in Lyons on 9 January 2013.

At the age of seventeen she began to lead a life of abnegation, and on Christmas Day, 1816, took a vow of perpetual virginity. She established a union of prayer among pious servant girls, the members of which were known as the "Réparatrices du Sacré-Coeur de Jésus-Christ".

During an extended visit to her married sister at Saint-Vallier, Drôme, she reformed lives of the numerous girls employed by her brother-in-law. It was among them and the "Réparatrices" that she first solicited offerings for the foreign missions.

Her systematic organization of such collections dates back to 1819 when she asked each of her intimate friends to act as a promoter by finding ten associates willing to contribute one cent a week to the propagation of the Catholic faith. One out of every ten promoters gathered the collections of their fellow-promoters; through a logical extension of this system, all the offerings were ultimately remitted to one central treasurer.

The Society for the Propagation of Faith at its official foundation (3 May 1822) adopted this method, over opposition.

Yes! She was instrumental in the canonisation of St Philomena, a saint more Catholics should know more about.

On a personal note, prior to my reversion, I joined the Association looking to establish some sort of prayer life. In six months I had a profound conversion, no doubt the result of the powerful intercession of Our Lady and her friends Venerable Pauline and St. Philomena.

From 1837 to 1961 celebration of her liturgical feast was approved for some places, but was never included in the General Roman Calendar for universal use. The 1920 typical edition of the Roman Missal included a mention of her, under 11 August, in the section headed Missae pro aliquibus locis (Masses for some places), with an indication that the Mass to be used in those places was one from the common of a Virgin Martyr, without any collect proper to the saint.

On 14 February 1961, the Holy See ordered that the name of Saint Philomena be removed from all liturgical calendars that mentioned her. Accordingly, the 1962 Roman Missal, the edition whose continued use as an extraordinary form of the Roman Rite is authorized by the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, also has no mention of her.

The Holy See's instruction to remove the name of Philomena even from local calendars followed the raising of questions by certain scholars, whose interest had been drawn to the phenomenon more especially in connection with the revelations of Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù. The questions were raised in particular by Orazio Marucchi, whose conclusions won the support of Johann Peter Kirsch, an archaeologist and ecclesiastical historian who is the author of the article on Philomena in the Catholic Encyclopedia, an article that has won the support of the historian William Carroll; but according to Mark Miravalle the conclusions have been rejected by others.

The inscription on the three tiles that had provided the Latin name "Filumena" ("Philomena" in English) belonged to the middle or second half of the second century, while the body that had been found was of the fourth century, when the persecutions of Christians had ended. Not only the name but also the leaf, the two anchors and the palm that decorated the three tiles, and which had been believed to indicate that Filumena was a martyr (though the necessary connection between these symbols and martyrdom has been denied), had no relation to the person whose remains were found. The disarrangement of the tiles was something fourth-century sextons regularly did when re-using materials already engraved, with the aim of indicating that it was not the same person who was now buried in the place.

The rector of the shrine in Mugnano del Cardinale disputes these findings. After reporting the decision of the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1961 as resulting from the studies of scholars, the Italian-language Enciclopedia dei Santi says that there still remain the miracles that occurred and the official recognition that the Church gave in the nineteenth century, the personal devotion to Saint Philomena of popes and people who were later canonized, and the widespread general devotion that still persists, particularly at Mugnano del Cardinale in the Diocese of Nola, where pilgrims from all over the world arrive continually, giving a display of intense popular devotion.

For many, the 1961 withdrawal of Pope Gregory XVI's 1837 authorization of liturgical veneration of Saint Philomena in a limited number of places (which was not an official declaration that she never existed nor that she is not a saint) merely means that the situation has returned to that existing before 1837, when in many places there was fervent devotion to her, accompanied only by vague speculation about the circumstances of her life and death or by belief in the revelations of the Neapolitan nun. The removal of an individual from the calendar does not necessarily indicate that he or she is not a saint.