AGONIA, ARCICONFRATERNITA DELL'.
The work of the “Santa Agonia di N. S. Gesù Cristo nell'orto degli ulivi” was established in the second half of the last century by A. I. Nicolle, a priest of the Mission, at the Shrine of Notre-Dame of Valfleury in France. The principal aim assigned by the founder, who died in the reputation of holiness on 21 June 1860, was to pray for the peace of the Church, for the preservation of the faith and the cessation of the scourges afflicting Christendom, and for poor dying persons.
Approved by the Archbishop of Lyon, the work was, in 1862, erected into a confraternity by a brief of Pius IX and enriched with numerous indulgences. By a further brief of 18 March 1865, Pius IX granted the association the title and privileges of an Archconfraternity for the archdiocese of Lyon, with the faculty of establishing confraternities throughout the diocese. Leo XIII (brief of 23 June 1880) extended the faculty of affiliation to confraternities erected in other dioceses. Pius X and Benedict XV were likewise generous with favours towards the meritorious work, whose director general is the Superior General of the Priests of the Mission.
The practices which the association prescribes or recommends to its members, whether ecclesiastics or laity, are: special prayers, the Holy Hour on Thursday evening, the Hour for the Dying each day, and visits to the dying to dispose them to a good death. The Archconfraternity possesses a medal bearing the image of Jesus in agony and of Our Lady of Sorrows. A bulletin printed in Turin is the official organ of the pious work.