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France

The cynical politics (and politicians) endorsing assisted dying and abortion

April 14, 2024

This is a bleak time to be pro-life. The holistic vision of human life from conception to natural death as being invested with dignity and worthy of respect is being steadily undermined by legislatures. In Britain and Ireland, there are moves to introduce assisted dying into law. An Irish parliamentary inquiry has recommended legislation to

France’s clash between church bell ringing and stroppy ‘rural newcomers’

April 11, 2024

The French government aims to pass a law that could help protect the ringing of church bells across the country’s rural regions that are the bastion of French Catholicism. The move follows tensions in rural areas following a rise in noise complaints attributed to residents who have moved to the countryside from big cities “bemoaning

‘God has undoubtedly decided to take over’: France’s continuing (and surprising) Catholic shift against secular progressivism

April 03, 2024

This year’s Easter Vigil was the busiest in years in France. Figures released last week by the bishops’ conference of France announced that 7,135 adults would receive the sacrament of baptism at the Easter Vigil. This is a 32 per cent increase on 2023 when 5,463 adults were baptised. This is an encouraging trend that

Did we just see the budding shoots of a Christian revival this Easter?

April 03, 2024

The Easter edition of the Spectator took a refreshingly upbeat stance on the State of Christendom, with Justin Brierley setting out his argument that we are seeing a Christian revival in England. Drawing on the much-reported religious experience of historian Tom Holland, he said that he could “see signs that he [God] is moving in

France becomes first country in world to make abortion a constitutional right

March 04, 2024

France has chosen to enshrine abortion as a constitutional right, thereby becoming the only country in the world to use its most fundamental principles of national law to guarantee the right to terminate a pregnancy up to 14 weeks. Lawmakers from both houses of the French Parliament voted 780 to 72 in favour of the

Rising from the ashes: Notre Dame comes to Westminster Abbey

February 19, 2024

On 15 April 2019 the world watched as Notre Dame de Paris burned. After the flèche collapsed and smoke appeared through the louvres of the west towers it seemed all but certain that one of the most iconic buildings of Christendom was doomed. Finding myself far away and sitting with a friend at dinner as

Why French farmers have the support of the Church in their protest movement

February 05, 2024

The tractors have lifted their blockades of Paris and other major French cities, and the farmers have made their way home. Their two-week nationwide protest movement was suspended on Friday, 2 February, after Emmanuel Macron’s government announced a series of measures – financial and administrative – to alleviate the suffering, the anger and the despair

How the stolen Parish Missal was returned to the people of Groix

January 15, 2024

Last summer, in a packed church on a small island in Brittany, the local mayor presented an Englishman with the Medal of Groix, its name taken from the aforementioned island. The recipient was Christopher Edwards, an antiquarian bookseller who also happens to be my father. He had done what various nationalities have urged the British