Traditionalist pilgrimage to Chartres in mainstream French media

"We're happy to be visible": From the Saint-Sulpice church in Paris, thousands of people began their march to Chartres on Saturday for the great traditionalist pilgrimage, which is attracting a record 19,000 Catholics this year, despite some tensions with the episcopate.

From six o'clock in the morning, pilgrims gather, backpacks on their backs and hiking boots on their feet, ready to tackle three days and 100 kilometers of walking. Among the banners and crosses held aloft to mark the boundaries of the "chapters," there are scouts, families, and groups in shorts and fleeces, with an average age of 24, according to the organizers.

"It's great, it also gives a boost to Catholic youth," Solenn Duchelas, 18, told AFP. She carried a rosary, a raincoat, a water bottle, and food in her bag—because "you have to keep going, it's especially the first day that's difficult, with 40 kilometers."

Some return every year.

"It's a time of renewal, of thanksgiving for the past year, of surpassing oneself too, (...) it feels good to put aside some of the comforts of our daily lives," explained Clotilde, 38.

Among the 1,700 foreign pilgrims, Chris, a 38-year-old New Yorker, is beginning his fourth "Chartres pilgrimage" and believes it is "important to publicly affirm support for our faith and its traditional expression."

327 masses and 36,500 hosts, 1,200 volunteers, 10 hectares of bivouac space every evening... With this pilgrimage, for which registration closed in five days, "we're happy to be visible," says 57-year-old Sabine Hadot.

Latin Mass

How can this success be explained? For Philippe Darantière, president of the organizing association Notre-Dame de Chrétienté, participants come to find "what the world no longer offers them," with "a faith expressed in a clear, uncompromising way."

The Latin Mass is thus de rigueur. The first, at Saint-Sulpice, is broadcast on a screen for the faithful kneeling on the pavement.

"Latin brings a more sacred aspect," says Victor, 23. "Everyone understands, it's universal," adds his neighbor Alice, 21.

François-Xavier, 26, believes, however, that "it's not the heart of the pilgrimage," seen as "traditional, whereas today it's no longer very representative."

Some, for example, are registering for the first time.

"This is our first Latin Mass, we're going to discover all this with my big brother!" exclaims Foulques de Gastines, 22.

Alexis Bernard, 24, returned to religion "only a few years ago": "This is my first pilgrimage, I can't wait!"

This enthusiasm has not escaped the attention of the Church in France.

"It's one of the expressions, but not the only one, of the Catholicism of adherence that we are seeing growing in the face of the decline of sociological Catholicism," says Matthieu Rougé, Bishop of the Diocese of Nanterre, which the pilgrims will briefly pass through.

Tensions

Others point to a broader context, marked by an increase in youth baptisms. "The Frat pilgrimage attracted 13,500 high school students from the Île-de-France region to Lourdes in April," says a Church insider.

But tensions remain. For the President of the French Episcopate, Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the success of the Chartres pilgrimage is "partly" based on "ambiguity," as many participants "are looking for an atmosphere, an exceptional moment."

Cathcon:  Shockingly tone deaf comment. Please do not patronise and you may also want to look at what passes for youth work in the modern Catholic Church - it is all to do with feeling and not about Faith. 

The organizers, for their part, are "hardening" in "an understanding of Tradition that ends up being false," he told Le Pèlerin in March.

The 43rd edition of the Pilgrimage thus experienced tensions over the ancient rite of the Mass.

A letter from Rome circulated to the bishops of France in early May reiterated this: an organization can organize "a pilgrimage, but has no authority regarding the liturgy."

While allowing the old rite to be used on the pilgrimage, the Bishop of Chartres, Philippe Christory, has asked that priests who so wish be able to celebrate their private Masses according to the current rite.

"No one is obliged to come", but "those who do are asked to accept our specific characteristics", replies Philippe Darantière, who warns that "there is no question of changing" the Association's statutes.

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