The Archbishop of Strasbourg, one of the centres of the coronavirus pandemic in France, said he had lost at least 12 priests and religious so far in the pandemic. “We can find good in evil, but an ordeal remains an ordeal: let’s not give it a moral reading too quickly,” Archbishop Luc Ravel said in an interview with La Croix. "After the lockdown, some parishes where there are several dozen dead will no doubt have to organise a celebration of collective mourning. It makes sense to celebrate together those who have died of the same scourge.”
For the first time, Catholics and Protestants in Alsace have organised an ecumenical Good Friday service around the Passion narrative in St John's Gospel. Since churches are closed because of the coronavirus lockdown, the regional station of France's state television broadcast the service introduced by Strasbourg's Catholic Archbishop Luc Ravel and Pastor Christian Krieger of the Union of Protestant Churches of Alsace and Lorraine. “On this Good Friday, we ... wanted to offer a service to everyone, especially those who don't have easy access to new technologies,” Ravel said. “With this celebration, we want to be really with the Saviour in his Passion.” Krieger said: “Pastors and priests want to create a link during this period of lockdown.”
The St-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet Catholic church in the centre of Parisheld an Easter Vigil Mass late on Saturday, police sources said, confirming a report first published by Le Point magazine. The priest was warned and booked for not respecting the confinement rules, the source said, making him liable for a 200 euro fine. Police had been tipped off by local residents who had heard music coming from the church in the fifth arrondissement. When the police arrived they found the doors of the church – one of a few churches in Paris that regularly and exclusively offers the Extraordinary Form of the Mass – firmly closed. At midnight, a person came out and acknowledged to the police that there were some 40 people inside. The worshippers themselves were not cautioned by the police, Le Point said.
Fr Henri Madelin SJ,a former provincial of the French Jesuits and editor-in-chief of its monthly journal Études, has died when infected by Covid-!9 just two weeks short of his 84th birthday. An intellectual at home in both religious and secular circles, Madelin taught at Paris universities, headed an association of Christian business leaders and was a European Union observer in Brussels. “His commitment shows the Christian faith is inseparable from a social and political commitment to justice, a commitment which cannot be lived without intellectual depth,” the province said in a communique.
Fr Michel Lelong, a pioneer in Catholic-Muslim dialogue in France, has died afterbeing infected by the coronavirus aged 95. The Arabic-speaking White Father lived two decades in Tunis before taking over the French bishops’ conference’s office for relations with Islam in 1975. He later stirred controversy with his pro-Palestinian positions and work for a dialogue with ultra-traditionalist Catholics.
Fr Patrice Gaudin, a priest in a northern suburb of Paris, is living through the coronavirus lockdown in his own church. “If I had left, it would have been a terrible testimony for the whole neighbourhood,” said Fr Gaudin, who has headed the parish in Bondy for the past five years. “I had to stay in the midst of the flock.” Fr Gaudin now sleeps in his office, broadcasts Mass on YouTube and tries to keep in touch with his parishioners. He told the weekly La Vie he thought the lockdown would make many priests rethink the busy lives they led before the virus hit. He said he kept up his spirits with the simple prayer: “Lord, into your hands I commend all this mess.”
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