A Missionary "Main Tendue" toward French Communists: The "Temoignages" of the Worker-Priests, 1943-1954

Abstract

Until late 1953 and early 1954 the worker-priests were largely unknown, yet in a few short months they became a cause celebre not only in France but throughout the western world. Their particular form of priesthood had become suspect in the eyes of the Vatican, so that Pius XII felt compelled to terminate their missionary experience and instructed three of France's prominent cardinals to inaugurate that unpleasant task. Consequently, in January 1954 the French bishops issued a public statement calling upon the worker-priests to abandon their ministry and place their future work in the hands of their respective bishops.1 The response was immediate. Both the Catholic and popular press within France and abroad chose sides, and a public controversy arose with respect to this handful of priests. Not only could one find lengthy stories about these men in the partisan periodical literature, both religious and Marxist, but the wider press throughout the western world brought this unique brand of priesthood to the public's attention. Aricles appeared in Le Monde, Le Figaro, I'Express and I'Aurore in France as well as in the Canadian Saturday Night and the American popular journals the New Republic, Nation, Time, New Yorker, and The New York Times Magazine. By the mid1960s twelve novels-including Gilbert Cesbron's best seller, Les Saints vont