“Chartres is ringing, Chartres is calling” (Chartres sonne, Chartres t’appelle)—this is the motto of the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté pilgrimage, which every year brings together the faithful attached to the traditional ritual that takes place on the roads from Paris to Chartres at Pentecost. They make the holy journey as a sign of support for the traditional, Tridentine, Mass. This year, Chartres attracted so many pilgrims that all records were broken, sending out an extraordinary signal of vitality to the world that enthrals far beyond the small circle of those convinced of the merits of the Tridentine Mass.
Last year, in 2022, the Christian pilgrimage celebrated its fortieth anniversary. Attendees experienced hail and flooding of cataclysmic proportions, and the event failed to live up to expectations. This year, a kind of miracle happened: for the first time since the pilgrimage was founded, the organisers had to close registrations a few days ahead of time to cope with the influx of pilgrims.
The figures for 2023 are impressive: over 16,000 pilgrims officially registered, to which can be added all those who joined the procession for a day or two, numbers difficult to count. The age of participants averages around 20 years old.
As the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté pilgrimage was underway, another known as the ‘Pilgrimage of Tradition’ was taking place, this one organised by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, in the Chartres-Paris direction, bringing together no fewer than 5,500 pilgrims. It is therefore no exaggeration to estimate that more than 20,000—perhaps 25,000 people—walked the roads of the Ile-de-France over these few days—ad majorem Dei gloriam.
The unusual and exceptional nature of the event was evident in other ways as well. For the first time, several national media outlets took an interest in the pilgrimage, which usually attracts only a little attention from regional journalists. The daily Le Parisien reported on the departure of the cohort from the Church of Saint-Sulpice in the centre of Paris. The national channel TF1, as well as the 24-hour news channel BFM TV, devoted a full report to the event. For the first time too, these media—usually unfriendly towards Catholics in general and traditionalists in particular—displayed a benevolent, almost admiring tone. They emphasised the vitality and youthfulness of the participants, and their contagious enthusiasm.
By way of endorsement, several public authorities visited the pilgrims, or welcomed their arrival, such as the Prefect of Yvelines who visited one of the bivouacs in the evening—officially for security reasons, but once again with genuine benevolence. As for the mayor of Chartres, he posted a tribute on his Facebook account to the pilgrimage, which, he admitted, transforms ‘his’ city and ‘his’ cathedral for a few hours each year.
We were able to gather testimonials from participants in this extraordinary 2023 event. Their diversity was impressive. Not all of them were regular pilgrims, far from it. Not all were familiar with the Tridentine rite and its secrets, but all had a thirst for the absolute, for demanding truth and beauty be honoured in a world where the sacred is constantly trampled underfoot and scorned.
Latha, a young woman from the Paris region, came to the pilgrimage for the first time at the invitation of a friend. She confesses that she signed up with some strong prejudices. As she doesn’t go to ‘trad’ Mass, she was afraid of finding herself drowned out by a group of narrow-minded, paramilitary-looking young people who were there more for sociological mimicry than for religious conviction. Her fears were shattered: my prejudices literally “exploded,” she admits with humour. “I saw priests everywhere, confessing, a faith rooted in the Real Presence, rosaries, something radical, simple, and true. I’d never seen that anywhere else.” Even if she remains cautious about some people’s distrust of the Paul VI Mass, she is almost certain: there will be a ‘before/after’ in her life of faith marked by when she took part in the pilgrimage.
Sophie, for her part, is a mother of four children and a regular on the pilgrimage. She went this year with all her children, divided into different ‘chapters’ according to their age. She usually attends liturgy at a Paul VI Mass at a parish near her home. So she’s not a ‘trad’ in the strict sense of the term. But she confesses that she needs, for herself and her children, what the pilgrimage brings: “something that sweeps us off our feet, lifts us up and transcends us”—a feeling that, in her opinion, the ‘official’ Church has difficulty in arousing today. Every year at Chartres, she likes to rediscover the “flamboyant”—that’s her word—side of the Catholic faith, which is essential in a world that has become so grey and dull. The colourful flags, the shimmering colours, and the powerful melodies that rise to the top gives her the deep emotional experience she needs to rekindle the flame of faith.
Her friend Pauline is a veteran of the pilgrimage: she made the journey from Paris to Chartres for the first time in 1987 at the age of seven. At the time, the closing Mass was held in front of Chartres Cathedral, whose doors remained stubbornly closed to pilgrims who were deemed suspicious. The Chartres pilgrimage means a great deal to her: through it, her family experienced the grace of conversion, and she met her future husband, who now works in the pilgrimage security services. Today, she is a regular devotee of the Tridentine rite. For her, the 2023 event is indeed something extraordinary, but the issue of defending the traditional Mass is no longer at the heart of it. Most of the participants make the pilgrimage without necessarily going to Latin Mass more than once a year, but they come to feel what it’s like to be surrounded by a living community that pulls them upwards.
A sense of the sacred and reverence: this is what young Mary, who has come from Arizona to stay with a French Catholic family for a few weeks, remembers about her participation in the pilgrimage. Before coming to Chartres, she knew a little about the traditional rite, without really attending. She was struck by the intensity of the pilgrims around her and speaks of a truly spiritual experience. Even though she doesn’t speak French, she felt powerfully embraced: “I never felt alone even if I couldn’t speak to people,” she explains. She was deeply moved by the contrast of this huge crowd, capable in an instant of plunging into total silence for Consecration, expressing a “clear love and joy for Jesus.” Coming back to Chartres? Why not, if the opportunity arose? Mary left the pilgrimage full of beautiful memories: “it brought me a lot of joy to see this reverence in so liberal a world. It gives me some hope,” she tells us.
Young Mary’s hope could be a hope for the Church as a whole. In the tense circumstances within the Catholic Church, with liturgical quarrelling ignited anew by the publication in July 2021 of the motu proprio Traditionis custodes (severely limiting the conditions for celebrating Mass in the traditional rite), this year’s Chrétienté pilgrimage was accompanied, welcomed, and even applauded by several figures from the ‘established’ Church—which, not so long ago, was quick to express its mistrust or concern about Catholics who were a little too conspicuous and accused of sowing discord. The Bishop of Chartres, Msgr. Christory, who came last year, this year shared the route with the pilgrims, whom he then welcomed in the cathedral. More unexpected was the presence of a Dominican Youtuber, Brother Paul-Adrien, who is well known among young Catholics who are ‘in’ on the internet and whose style is often quite at odds with the traditional Mass. He too joined the procession and posted an enthusiastic video, hammering with conviction: “Where are the young Catholics? Well, they’re here, at the Chartres pilgrimage!”
Photo: Notre-Dame de Chrétienté
Henrik Lidell, a journalist with the weekly magazine La Vie, which is clearly progressive in outlook, gave a particularly significant account. After observing the Chartres pilgrimage phenomenon from afar for several years in a row, he lent himself to the game this year as a journalist, with a great deal of honesty. His words are striking. Although he doesn’t come from a ‘trad’ background and, as he says himself, is attached to a charismatic liturgy (quite removed from the solemnity of the Tridentine Mass), he explains: “I know how to recognise Christian faith and behaviour.” He describes a world that is “conservative, in the good sense of the word.” He continues:
In this pilgrimage, I discover a thirst for the absolute, a search for God, a desire for conversion. I think of Péguy. It’s really very rich. I’d like to say a personal thank you to the people I meet and for what this pilgrimage brings me. I can see and feel the Christian faith here.
Two words to sum up his experience: “respect and gratitude.”
Lidell’s is not an isolated experience, and as a good journalist, he has a duty to draw wider conclusions from his experience. For him, the failure of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes is obvious. The text has not been understood; it has hurt and harmed many believers on the basis of fallacious arguments, and, ironically, by not respecting the famous sacrosanct “diversity” brandished by Pope Francis: “Pilgrims say they want to be in unity, not in uniformity. And there, their argument is unstoppable, in my opinion.” If a tree is to be judged by its fruits, those observed by Lidell are obvious: “Finally, I note that they bring many converts to the Church, that they are truly missionary, that they even seem capable of introducing more sociological diversity into our Catholic Church.”
Returning a few days after the pilgrimage to the root of the problem, he believes that the Chartres pilgrimage raises legitimate questions from which the prelates cannot shirk. There are lessons to be learned from Chartres for the ‘official’ Church. “I start from the idea that young pilgrims have something to show us that we should take seriously. Because they bear witness to something that is contemporary. And also because they are part of the Catholic Church.”
Hélène de Lauzun is the Paris correspondent for The European Conservative. She studied at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. She taught French literature and civilization at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in History from the Sorbonne. She is the author of Histoire de l’Autriche (Perrin, 2021).
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Chartres Pilgrimage: A Path to Heaven
Photo: Notre-Dame de Chrétienté.
“Chartres is ringing, Chartres is calling” (Chartres sonne, Chartres t’appelle)—this is the motto of the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté pilgrimage, which every year brings together the faithful attached to the traditional ritual that takes place on the roads from Paris to Chartres at Pentecost. They make the holy journey as a sign of support for the traditional, Tridentine, Mass. This year, Chartres attracted so many pilgrims that all records were broken, sending out an extraordinary signal of vitality to the world that enthrals far beyond the small circle of those convinced of the merits of the Tridentine Mass.
Last year, in 2022, the Christian pilgrimage celebrated its fortieth anniversary. Attendees experienced hail and flooding of cataclysmic proportions, and the event failed to live up to expectations. This year, a kind of miracle happened: for the first time since the pilgrimage was founded, the organisers had to close registrations a few days ahead of time to cope with the influx of pilgrims.
The figures for 2023 are impressive: over 16,000 pilgrims officially registered, to which can be added all those who joined the procession for a day or two, numbers difficult to count. The age of participants averages around 20 years old.
As the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté pilgrimage was underway, another known as the ‘Pilgrimage of Tradition’ was taking place, this one organised by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X, in the Chartres-Paris direction, bringing together no fewer than 5,500 pilgrims. It is therefore no exaggeration to estimate that more than 20,000—perhaps 25,000 people—walked the roads of the Ile-de-France over these few days—ad majorem Dei gloriam.
The unusual and exceptional nature of the event was evident in other ways as well. For the first time, several national media outlets took an interest in the pilgrimage, which usually attracts only a little attention from regional journalists. The daily Le Parisien reported on the departure of the cohort from the Church of Saint-Sulpice in the centre of Paris. The national channel TF1, as well as the 24-hour news channel BFM TV, devoted a full report to the event. For the first time too, these media—usually unfriendly towards Catholics in general and traditionalists in particular—displayed a benevolent, almost admiring tone. They emphasised the vitality and youthfulness of the participants, and their contagious enthusiasm.
By way of endorsement, several public authorities visited the pilgrims, or welcomed their arrival, such as the Prefect of Yvelines who visited one of the bivouacs in the evening—officially for security reasons, but once again with genuine benevolence. As for the mayor of Chartres, he posted a tribute on his Facebook account to the pilgrimage, which, he admitted, transforms ‘his’ city and ‘his’ cathedral for a few hours each year.
We were able to gather testimonials from participants in this extraordinary 2023 event. Their diversity was impressive. Not all of them were regular pilgrims, far from it. Not all were familiar with the Tridentine rite and its secrets, but all had a thirst for the absolute, for demanding truth and beauty be honoured in a world where the sacred is constantly trampled underfoot and scorned.
Latha, a young woman from the Paris region, came to the pilgrimage for the first time at the invitation of a friend. She confesses that she signed up with some strong prejudices. As she doesn’t go to ‘trad’ Mass, she was afraid of finding herself drowned out by a group of narrow-minded, paramilitary-looking young people who were there more for sociological mimicry than for religious conviction. Her fears were shattered: my prejudices literally “exploded,” she admits with humour. “I saw priests everywhere, confessing, a faith rooted in the Real Presence, rosaries, something radical, simple, and true. I’d never seen that anywhere else.” Even if she remains cautious about some people’s distrust of the Paul VI Mass, she is almost certain: there will be a ‘before/after’ in her life of faith marked by when she took part in the pilgrimage.
Sophie, for her part, is a mother of four children and a regular on the pilgrimage. She went this year with all her children, divided into different ‘chapters’ according to their age. She usually attends liturgy at a Paul VI Mass at a parish near her home. So she’s not a ‘trad’ in the strict sense of the term. But she confesses that she needs, for herself and her children, what the pilgrimage brings: “something that sweeps us off our feet, lifts us up and transcends us”—a feeling that, in her opinion, the ‘official’ Church has difficulty in arousing today. Every year at Chartres, she likes to rediscover the “flamboyant”—that’s her word—side of the Catholic faith, which is essential in a world that has become so grey and dull. The colourful flags, the shimmering colours, and the powerful melodies that rise to the top gives her the deep emotional experience she needs to rekindle the flame of faith.
Her friend Pauline is a veteran of the pilgrimage: she made the journey from Paris to Chartres for the first time in 1987 at the age of seven. At the time, the closing Mass was held in front of Chartres Cathedral, whose doors remained stubbornly closed to pilgrims who were deemed suspicious. The Chartres pilgrimage means a great deal to her: through it, her family experienced the grace of conversion, and she met her future husband, who now works in the pilgrimage security services. Today, she is a regular devotee of the Tridentine rite. For her, the 2023 event is indeed something extraordinary, but the issue of defending the traditional Mass is no longer at the heart of it. Most of the participants make the pilgrimage without necessarily going to Latin Mass more than once a year, but they come to feel what it’s like to be surrounded by a living community that pulls them upwards.
A sense of the sacred and reverence: this is what young Mary, who has come from Arizona to stay with a French Catholic family for a few weeks, remembers about her participation in the pilgrimage. Before coming to Chartres, she knew a little about the traditional rite, without really attending. She was struck by the intensity of the pilgrims around her and speaks of a truly spiritual experience. Even though she doesn’t speak French, she felt powerfully embraced: “I never felt alone even if I couldn’t speak to people,” she explains. She was deeply moved by the contrast of this huge crowd, capable in an instant of plunging into total silence for Consecration, expressing a “clear love and joy for Jesus.” Coming back to Chartres? Why not, if the opportunity arose? Mary left the pilgrimage full of beautiful memories: “it brought me a lot of joy to see this reverence in so liberal a world. It gives me some hope,” she tells us.
Young Mary’s hope could be a hope for the Church as a whole. In the tense circumstances within the Catholic Church, with liturgical quarrelling ignited anew by the publication in July 2021 of the motu proprio Traditionis custodes (severely limiting the conditions for celebrating Mass in the traditional rite), this year’s Chrétienté pilgrimage was accompanied, welcomed, and even applauded by several figures from the ‘established’ Church—which, not so long ago, was quick to express its mistrust or concern about Catholics who were a little too conspicuous and accused of sowing discord. The Bishop of Chartres, Msgr. Christory, who came last year, this year shared the route with the pilgrims, whom he then welcomed in the cathedral. More unexpected was the presence of a Dominican Youtuber, Brother Paul-Adrien, who is well known among young Catholics who are ‘in’ on the internet and whose style is often quite at odds with the traditional Mass. He too joined the procession and posted an enthusiastic video, hammering with conviction: “Where are the young Catholics? Well, they’re here, at the Chartres pilgrimage!”
Henrik Lidell, a journalist with the weekly magazine La Vie, which is clearly progressive in outlook, gave a particularly significant account. After observing the Chartres pilgrimage phenomenon from afar for several years in a row, he lent himself to the game this year as a journalist, with a great deal of honesty. His words are striking. Although he doesn’t come from a ‘trad’ background and, as he says himself, is attached to a charismatic liturgy (quite removed from the solemnity of the Tridentine Mass), he explains: “I know how to recognise Christian faith and behaviour.” He describes a world that is “conservative, in the good sense of the word.” He continues:
Two words to sum up his experience: “respect and gratitude.”
Lidell’s is not an isolated experience, and as a good journalist, he has a duty to draw wider conclusions from his experience. For him, the failure of the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes is obvious. The text has not been understood; it has hurt and harmed many believers on the basis of fallacious arguments, and, ironically, by not respecting the famous sacrosanct “diversity” brandished by Pope Francis: “Pilgrims say they want to be in unity, not in uniformity. And there, their argument is unstoppable, in my opinion.” If a tree is to be judged by its fruits, those observed by Lidell are obvious: “Finally, I note that they bring many converts to the Church, that they are truly missionary, that they even seem capable of introducing more sociological diversity into our Catholic Church.”
Returning a few days after the pilgrimage to the root of the problem, he believes that the Chartres pilgrimage raises legitimate questions from which the prelates cannot shirk. There are lessons to be learned from Chartres for the ‘official’ Church. “I start from the idea that young pilgrims have something to show us that we should take seriously. Because they bear witness to something that is contemporary. And also because they are part of the Catholic Church.”
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