French Bishops Worry about the Wrong People

 

 


The President of the French Bishops' Conference, Mgr Éric Marie de Moulins-Beaufort, 62, Archbishop of Reims (560,000 Catholics), sent a circular letter to his brother Bishops on Wednesday 17 July 2024.

The letter concerns the Communauté Saint Martin, which is in the Vatican's crosshairs because it is serious and has "too many" vocations, benefiting a third of French dioceses.

PaixLiturgique.fr (2 August) reports that the diocese of Reims has not ordained a priest since 2014.

Monsignor Moulins-Beaufort has been in Reims since 2018. He has managed to recruit some seminarians from the diocese of Hanoi, Vietnam, with the agreement of the local bishop.

The Community of Saint Martin is not present in the archdiocese of Reims. The bishop prefers to import people from distant countries. PaixLiturgique.fr calls this neo-colonial exploitation.

In his letter, Moulins-Beaufort speaks of "the new stage" that the Community of Saint Martin "must enter".

He calls for a "greater clarity" of its charism and a "re-reading of its history" in order to "adapt its pastoral care for vocations" as well as its formation.

Much more than the Community of Saint Martin, such problems affect the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Dominicans and almost all the old religious communities, but because they have no vocations and are anti-Catholic, nobody worries about them.

PaixLiturgique.fr also notes that the jealous Moulins-Beaufort himself "has neither founded nor transmitted anything".

Picture: Éric de Moulins-Beaufort © wikicommons, CC BY-SA, #newsEtlyrunuwh