On Valentine’s Day I travelled back from Lisieux and Alençon feeling a confidence in the intercession of the various members of the Martin family, but also a deep sadness, for it is impossible to ignore the evidence that the Church in France is in terminal decline.
While there I read an article in a French Catholic periodical which described the crisis in so many dioceses where priests in their 80s and even their 90s are still covering anything up to 15 rural parishes. The priests who celebrated Mass in St Thérèse’s Carmel, the vast majority of the congregation and the Carmelite community (save for two young Indian nuns) were in their 80s, I would estimate. In the Little Flower’s Carmel there are no young French vocations. In the Hermitage where we stayed and lodged and at the shrine in the Martin home in Alençon, there was not a single French religieuse; they were all missionaries from South America or Africa.
