French Catholics to Pray National Rosary

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PARIS (ChurchMilitant.com) - Catholics in France are rallying for a nationwide Rosary on April 28.

In the past five months, Church Militant has reported on about a half dozen national Rosary rallies organized in countries such as Poland and Ireland. Inspired by those prayer events, a similar initiative is in the works in France, the nation known as the Eldest Daughter of the Church.

The upcoming prayer initiative is called "Rosaire Aux Frontieres" or "Rosary at the Borders" in English.

A press release for the event proclaims, "'There is a great pity in the kingdom of France.' How can we not hear these words — from the Archangel St. Michael to St. Joan of Arc — echo in the sad period in which our country is plunged?"

It describes the evils of the time, stating:

Indeed, where to find comfort in a country where every year, 200,000 children are killed in the womb of their mother, where the brains of our children are crushed by a national education that only wishes to turn them into uprooted individuals cut from any determinism, where the future for our young people is long-term unemployment or a degrading and underpaid job, embellished with a chaotic family and sentimental life, all in a foreign, hostile and immoral environment and where the future for our elderly comes down to a pill that will send them gently to their death.

The French press release concludes, "O Mary, dear mother, keep in the heart of the French the faith of the old days! Hear from Heaven this cry of the fatherland: Catholics and French always!"

France is a country full of nominal Catholics. It has also been the repeated victim of Islamic terrorist attacks.

The small number of Mass-attending faithful in France have even been targeted by terrorists. In July 2016, Fr. Jacques Hamel was killed by Muslim extremists while offering Mass in Normandy.

Though France was the Eldest Daughter of the Church, the nation was also the epicenter of secularism beginning with the French Revolution, which viciously overturned the nation's Catholic identity.

Mass attendance in France has been low for generations, but the fallout in recent decades has been especially terrible. Over one-third of France's Catholics were attending Mass back in the 1960s. According to polling done in 2012, fewer than 10 percent of France's Catholics frequent Sunday Mass nowadays.

The April 28 event in France is just the latest in a whole slew of Rosary initiatives in countries around the world. It all began with Poland's Rosary to the Borders in October 2017, which drew about 1 million participants and international media coverage.

As reported previously, Catholics in Britain are planning a national Rosary on April 29 — one day after the French Rosary. A similar initiative is also coming to Australia on May 13.

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