France Archives - Faith Full Catholic Podcast with Tony Ganzer

This cemetery in northern France tells us something about Catholicism in this country. I’ve been here many times over the last 15 years, a tiny slice of this village’s lifetime, stretching to the 12^th century. In 2013, broken crucifixes and stones littered the grounds of St. Martin church. Flowers and vegetation reclaimed many plots, and at least to me the site felt forgotten. But something changed, bringing some well-needed love and attention to St. Martin. At a time when there are some glimpses of hope for the faith in France.

In this short episode we’ll visit the cemetery at St. Martin church in a small village in France’s Picardie region to see what its condition says, or doesn’t, about the state of the Catholic faith here, especially as Pope Leo XIV has called for a missionary renewal in France, and baptisms are on the rise.

You may not realize it, but the Catholic faith was one of the great targets of the French Revolution, birthing martyrs and saints from persecution and bloodshed. Sixteen Carmelite nuns were beheaded in 1794 for remaining true to their vows, and nothing more. During the so-called Reign of Terror which saw revolutionaries sniffing out real and imagined conspiracies, these nuns were expelled from their monastic life and offered a choice: renounce their faith, and submit to extreme secularism, or be deemed enemies of the state.

The prioress Mother Teresa of St. Augustine proposed the sisters offer their lives for the salvation of France, fulfilling a prophetic dream from another sister a hundred years before. The act of sacrifice was offered while the nuns sang hymns and prayed, guillotined in front of a crowd faced with the consequence of madness.

Jonathan O’Brien: “I feel like this part of history has been so either misrepresented or just glossed over. If there’s basically a genocide against Catholics and thousands of martyrs that are being killed just for their faith you would think it might have at least been mentioned in history class, but it wasn’t.”

In this episode we’ll learn more about the martyrs of Compiegne who have just been declared saints by Pope Francis in December 2024. We’ll hear from Jonathan O’Brien, author of the book Called to Compiègne, who explored this tremendous story.

Tag: France

What a village cemetery says about Catholicism in France

The Saints of Compiègne and martyrs of Catholic France