AGONIA, ARCHCONFRATERNITY of the. - The work of the « Holy Agony of Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives » was established in the second half of the last century by A. I. Nicolle, a priest of the Mission, at the Sanctuary of Notre-Dame de Valfeury, in France. Its principal purpose, assigned to it by its founder, who died in the reputation of sanctity on 21 June 1890, is to pray for the peace of the Church, for the preservation of the faith and the cessation of the scourges that afflict Christianity, and for the poor dying.
Approved by the archbishop of Lyons, the work was, in 1862, by a brief of Pius IX, erected into a confraternity and enriched with numerous indulgences. By a brief of 18 March 1865, Pius IX then granted the association the title and privileges of an Archconfraternity for the archdiocese of Lyons, with the faculty of establishing confraternities throughout the diocese. Leo XIII (brief of 23 June 1890) extended the faculty of aggregation to confraternities erected in other dioceses. Pius X
and Benedict XV were generous in benevolence and favors toward the meritorious work, whose general director is the superior general of the Priests of the Mission.
The practices which the association prescribes or recommends to its members, ecclesiastical or lay, are: special prayers, the Holy Hour on Thursday evening, every day the Hour for the dying, and visits to the latter in order to prepare them for 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.