Françoise Perroton

Françoise Perroton (also: Sister Marie du Mont-Carmel ) (* February 6, 1796 in Lyon ; † August 10, 1873 in Ono , Futuna in the South Pacific ) was a French Roman Catholic Marist missionary sister SMSM and missionary in Oceania.

Life

Lyon until 1843

Françoise Perrotons grew up in the center of Lyon near the church of Saint-Nizier, from which an intense missionary movement emanated in the 19th century. Her father, who was a haberdashery dealer in Lyon and had given her a good education, died when she was 15 years old. She had to look after her mother and became a tutor in the respected Maire-Delaroche family, from 1833 manager of the Janmot family, whose son, the painter Louis Janmot , worked with the Lyon elite around Laurent-Paul Brac de La Perrière (1814-1894) , and Frédéric Ozanam went. From 1820 Françoise was the leader of a donor group in the mission association established by Pauline Jaricot . The mission association supported the Lyon Marist Fathers , who took over the missions in the western South Seas in 1836 and had their first martyr in the person of Pierre Chanel on the island of Futuna in 1841 . In 1838 both her mother and her employer died.

From Lyon to Wallis (Uvea)

When in 1843 she read in the information sheet Annales de la propagation de la foi published by the mission association that the women of Wallis in the Pacific Ocean asked for pious women to be sent because the Marist Fathers who worked there could only look after the men, she decided in 1845 with support by Pierre Julien Eymard , as a 49-year-old woman to invest the rest of her life in missions on the other side of the world. On the ship Arche d'Alliance of the lay organization Société française d'Océanie SFO under Captain Auguste Marceau (1806-1851) she traveled with several missionaries from November 15, 1845 to October 23, 1846 the 20,000 km via Valparaiso and Tahiti to Wallis , where she met the missionary bishop Pierre Bataillon (1810-1877) and was housed in a hut by King Soane-Patita Vaimua Lavelua I in Mata Utu . She was the only European on the island. She began her educational work with the local girls and young women. One of her first students was the future Queen Amelia Tokagahahau Aliki (1845–1895). The pastor was Ferdinand Junillon (1799–1871) from Bourg-de-Péage . In addition to the educational aspects (above all cleanliness and a sense of order, as well as catechism), she devoted herself to nursing the sick and housekeeping for the missionaries.

The hard life in Valais

Her efficiency was highly praised by the missionaries, but she suffered all the more from loneliness because she never achieved a fluent command of the language and always felt a stranger. She strongly advised against sending more women, as she considered the living conditions to be unreasonable. Junillon built her a permanent house. Her group of students grew to 100, but was mostly perceived by her as apathetic and emotionally cold and not very suitable for creating a feeling of success. Her official status since 1850 was that of a member of the Third Order of Mary ( Tiers Ordre de Marie , TOM, lay Marists).

Overcoming the crises in Futuna. In the Third Order of Mary

When Bishop Bataillon set out on a trip to France via Sydney in the summer of 1854 , Françoise accompanied him with the intention of giving up her position. However, since the first stop on the island of Futuna, 200 km away, was extended due to the failure of a ship, she finally stayed there and let the battalion go on alone. On the Kolopelu plateau, which is still the site of a school today, she resumed her teaching life. She was a member of the parish of Notre-Dame des Martyrs , but she continued to feel lonely. At the end of 1857, when the onset of tropical elephantiasis of the legs appeared, she fell into a crisis for a second time and decided to return to France for good. This was followed by the arrival of the Marist Victor-François Poupinel (1815-1884) with three women from Lyon, Françoise Bartet ( Soeur Marie de la Pitié , 1820-1894, from Lyon, parish of Saint-Nizier), Jeanne Albert ( Soeur Marie de la Sainte-Espérance , 1831–1872, from Saint-Chamond ) and Marie Basset ( Sœur Marie de la Miséricorde , 1830–1904, from Saint-Laurent-de-Chamousset ). In the meantime the Marists had founded a Third Order of Mary, in which Françoise Perroton was now clothed. On August 25, 1858 she made her profession in the hands of Poupinel and took the religious name Sœur Marie du Mont-Carmel . The crisis was over.

Lonely in old age

Two sisters were subsequently withdrawn for other islands, and only Marie de la Pitié stayed with her. In return Junillon became the local pastor of Notre-Dame des Martyrs, to which a short but arduous path led from Kolopelu. At the age of 62, Sister Marie du Mont-Carmel felt increasingly a burden for those around her. From the summer of 1859 the sisters were four again, when Jeanne Albert came back and Marie Meissonnier ( Soeur Marie de la Merci , 1837–?, Daughter of a ruined banker in Provence) joined them, but the former was withdrawn and the latter to the northern part of the island ( Sigave ) where, although alone, she was very successful. There she was withdrawn from Bataillon in 1864 and replaced by Marie de la Pitié, with whom Marie du Mont-Carmel did not get along well. So the latter was alone again, albeit near Junillon, with whom she got along well. Yet she felt increasingly useless and suffered from it.

Novitiate to the Missionary Sisters

The congregation "Notre-Dame des Missions" (Missionary Sisters of Our Lady, RNDM), founded in 1861 by Euphrasie Barbier in collaboration with the Marists, saw itself as the heir of the third order sisters in Oceania and sought the integration of the "pioneers" into the Medal. The superior of the order, since 1864 with the religious name of Sister Coeur de Jésus , had a correspondence with Marie du Mont-Carmel in this regard, but met with reluctant approval, since Marie could not imagine the enclosure requested by the superior under the tropical conditions. Nevertheless, after the novitiate started in August 1867, she and Marie de la Pitié made her temporary profession on March 18, 1869 “with her eyes closed” in the hands of Father Junillon, but knew that she had smuggled into it ( par contrebande ), because she did not live by the rule, did not want to live and also could not. There was nothing more, because Euphrasia Barbier achieved her independence from the Marists with the Pope in the same year, a separation of which the sisters in Oceania were not aware and of which they were informed late because of the distance. It is believed, however, that Marie du Mont-Carmel, like others faced with a choice, returned to the Third Order TOM.

Death in Oceania. Recognition as a pioneer of lay missions

From September 4, 1871, Marie du Mont-Carmel again had a companion, Jeanne-Marie Autin ( Soeur Marie Rose , 1839–1912, from Jonzieux ) who took care of her. After being bedridden for the last year of her life, she died in August 1873 at the age of 77 and was buried on site. Six months later, Euphrasie Barbier arrived, from whom Marie du Mont-Carmel had always received letters with the greatest respect and who had just written to her: “Don't die before I arrive!” The correspondence left with Françoise Perroton went lost in a shipwreck. Her own letters were published in 2001. The Third Order was officially founded in 1881 as Tiers Ordre régulier de Marie (TORM) and officially renamed Soeurs missionnaires de la Société de Marie (SMSM) in 1931 . The congregation unofficially claims Françoise Perroton as the founder (“who gave the impetus”). Euphrasia Barbier's congregation “Notre-Dame des Missions”, which after an arbitration by the Pope gave up Oceania and left the TOM / TORM, also claims Françoise Perroton as an early member.

Works

• Letters of Marie Francoise Perroton, Sister Marie du Mont Carmel from 1845 to 1873 . Edited by Mary Emerentiana Cooney and Marie Ancilla Grosperrin. Missionary Sisters of the Society of Mary, Rome 2001.

Literature (chronological)

• Antoine Forissier: Présences de Marie. Fondatrices et fondateurs de la famille mariste . Nouvelle Cité, Paris 1990.
• Frédéric Angleviel: Les missions à Wallis et Futuna au XIXe siècle . Presses Univ de Bordeaux, Bordeaux 1994.
• Claude Rozier: Marie-Françoise Perroton (1796–1873). Une figure de proue de la mission mariste en Océanie . Ed. Osmondes, Paris 1997.
• Yannick Essertel: L'aventure missionnaire lyonnaise 1815–1962 . Paris, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2001.
• Marie-Bénédicte Ollivier: Missionnaire ... aux quatre vents du monde. Euphrasia barber. Fondatrice de la Congrégation de Notre-Dame des Missions (1829-1893) . Instituto salesiano Pio XI, Rome 2007.
• Agnès Bread and Guillemette de La Borie: Héroïnes de Dieu. L'épopée des religieuses missionnaires au XIXe siècle . Presses de la Renaissance, Paris 2011, 2016.
• Figures lyonnaises de la foi. Conférences de Carême 2014 in Fourvière . Parole et silence, Paris 2014.

Web links

• Information on Françoise Perroton in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about Françoise Perroton in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries )
• Biography , English
• Short biography on the SMSM website , in French, English, Spanish
• Biographical note , French