One might have expected Pope Francis to celebrate Mass in Marseille with wine from Châteauneuf du Pape, the prestigious appellation on the Rhône whose name derives from the residency of the Avignon popes in the region.
In fact he used a much more modest – but ecologically sound – wine at his public Mass on 23 September.
Wine from La Bénisson-Dieu, a small village with a former Cistercian abbey northwest of Lyon, was chosen for the occasion. Several families have founded an “eco-hamlet” there in honour of the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si’.
Régis and Aude-Reine Anouilh, who began making wine there about five years ago, said the encyclical was one of the inspirations that convinced the couple to leave their settled Paris lives for a patch of grape vines in the country
“We put as little as possible on our vines and do not put any additives into our wine. This ultimately meets the guidelines for sacramental wine issued by the Dicastery for Divine Worship,” Régis told Famille Chrétienne.
When he learned Pope Francis would visit Marseille, Anouilh offered the organisers his Grange de la Bénisson-Dieu, a grenache blanc from 2021. They accepted, so he also sent another of his vintages called Laudato Si’, a red gamay from 2020.
“The encyclical Laudato Si’ came to synthesise everything we aspired to,” he said. The turn toward wine making was “accompanied by this encyclical from the Pope”.
Prior to their rural life, Régis edited Eglises d’Asie, an information service of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, while Aude-Reine was chancellor of the Diocese of Nanterre. Wine-making was a mid-life departure.
Unlike his simple natural wine, Régis said, most communion wine is “sweet and full of sulphites” to make it longer lasting than normal wines.
“No doubt [this is] a way of fighting against alcoholism in the clergy, each priest not being obliged to finish the open bottle to celebrate a Mass,” he laughed.
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