Pontifical Society of St Peter the Apostle
Jeanne Bigard
History
The history of the Mission Societies shows how support for missions comes from the people of God and how God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong (1 Cor 1: 27-29).
The Society of St. Peter the Apostle (POSPA) was established to support the indigenous clergy.
From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, the Holy See repeatedly drew attention to the need to support indigenous clergy. It became clear to Missionaries that their action would be incomplete if it did not come to the creation of a local clergy, but the realization of this reality always clashed with various obstacles and difficulties. One of the obstacles was due to the lack of resources for both the creation of seminaries and the formation of seminarians. In order to find a solution, the missionaries issued appeals to their benefactors in Europe.
In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, Msgr. Jules-Alphonse Cousin, of the Foreign Missions of Paris, Apostolic Vicar of Southern Japan in 1855, then Bishop of Nagasaki in1891, found himself in the position of having to refuse young men who had clear signs of a priestly vocation because of lack of resources. This was the source of great sorrow for him as he knew they were essential for the growth of the church in Japan.
On June 1st, 1889, Msgr Cousin approached a benefactress by the name of Jeanne Bigard who, along with her mother Stephanie, was very supportive of the missions. This was to be starting point for the foundation of the Society of St. Peter the Apostle.
Mission
The Society of St. Peter the Apostle promotes, in Christian communities, the awareness of the need to develop local clergy and consecrated life in recently founded missionary Churches.
It animates and coordinates missionary collaboration in all the local Churches, through the offering of prayer, sacrifices and alms, to support the formation of future priests and men and women religious of young Churches, and the necessary preparation of their formators.
It collects and distributes financial aid to support seminaries and novitiates, in collaboration with local Christian communities and under the guidance of their pastors.
The economic collaboration of the Society of St. Peter the Apostle is achieved through the Ordinary Subsidies for the maintenance of seminarians and novices; Extraordinary Subsidies for the construction of new seminaries, for the rehabilitation and self-financing projects of the existing ones; the “Holy Mass Intentions” to support formators, Scholarships for future formators. In this collaboration, the final objective of POSPA, like that of all the other Pontifical Societies, remains the spread of the Gospel and the progress of the Kingdom of God.