Lourdes: its churches, its sanctuary, its source, and… its soldiers. Each year, between 14,000 and 15,000 soldiers travel to the town in the Hautes-Pyrénées in May to participate in the international military pilgrimage (PMI). Among them, a delegation of around 5,000 French people, in uniform, joined the three days of Catholic celebrations. On the program for each edition: “solemn religious ceremonies”, “moments of contemplation” and “exchanges between the military”, as indicated in the press release for the 2024 edition, which took place from May 24 to 26 in the Marian city.
“I started going there in 2005, when I was still a deputy gendarme,” says Gilbert Painblanc, who became a photographer – a volunteer – for the Hospitalité Notre-Dame des Armées. Since then, I have returned every year: it’s is the largest gathering of military personnel in the world outside conflict zones.” The tradition has been perpetuated since 1945. Institutionalized in 1958, the PMI brings together soldiers from all over the planet every year. Members of the French executive sometimes even go there: in 2018, on the occasion of its 60th edition, the Secretary of State to the Minister of the Armed Forces, Geneviève Darrieussecq, was present there. Planes from the French patrol flew over Lourdes on the occasion of this anniversary. Unique in its scale, the PMI is however not the only pilgrimage taking place within the armed forces. Every year, the Protestant movement organizes its own. At one time, Muslim soldiers left for Mecca on their own. In a secular country like France, the maintenance of these religious traditions within the army may be surprising. They are one of the avatars of the specific management of religions within military institutions where the State claims the existence of “military secularism”.
Under the authority of the armies
Chaplaincies have been provided for in French law for almost two centuries. “Since the laws of 1880 and 1886, it has been provided for in the law that chaplains paid by the taxpayer can assist soldiers in their religious activities,” explains historian Patrick Weil, research director at the CNRS and author Secularism in France (Grasset, 2021). This provision was not changed by the promulgation in December 1905 of the law concerning the separation of Churches and the State, and which founded the principle of secularism.
Unlike schools, for example, the army is one of the so-called “closed” institutions, where the people working there have difficulty moving around – in the same way as prisons, barracks, hospitals, or even boarding schools. “For these spaces, the law therefore provides an exception to the separation of Church and State, in order to allow those who operate there to exercise their faith, continues Patrick Weil. The military lives in a total organization which rules their entire life. The question of worship is managed by the chaplaincies.” Four in number – Catholic, Jewish, and, since 2005, Muslim – they have more than 360 chaplains, salaried by the State, and considered as “non-rank” officers. “The chaplaincy and its activities are totally integrated into the army, we are not an appendage, explains Antoine de Romanet, bishop to the French armies. We are military. We wear the uniform and I am under the authority of the chief of the Armed Forces Staff.
Logistics support
On a daily basis, the chaplains have three main missions: “Maintain the morale of the troops, help the command by relaying information on the feelings of the soldiers, and ensure the ceremonial of each confession, lists General Eric Autellet, member of the High Committee of “evaluation of the military condition (HCECM) and major general of the armies from March 2021 to August 2023. Pilgrimages are part of the activities offered by the chaplaincies, which are organized in dialogue with the General Staff”. Pilgrimages take place on days of leave or permission and are the financial responsibility of the participants. “The soldiers who take part are all volunteers,” points out Antoine de Romanet, who insists on the importance of the “international” aspect of the event in Lourdes. “This pilgrimage, which brings together soldiers from around fifty nations, contributes to the influence of France,” he wants to believe. The presence of members of the executive at certain editions tends to prove him right.
In any case, it testifies to the place of religion in the armies. The subject is so important that the ministry published a long explanatory brochure in 2019: “Explaining French secularism: pedagogy through the example of “military secularism””. Its goal: to be a response “to the most commonly expressed misunderstandings” about it. Designed after a request from French defense attachés stationed abroad, the booklet, of liberal inspiration, intends to respond to “a strategic imperative: to say and prove that the Republic is not a regime hostile to religions”. The existence of military pilgrimages, a very official expression of the faith of certain soldiers, is detailed there. We learn that “French military chaplaincies are active in the organization of military pilgrimages of an international nature”. Among them, that of Lourdes, but also that organized with the assistance of the Protestant chaplaincy. Since 1951, the International Rally of Protestant Soldiers has taken place every year in June in Gard. Around 500 soldiers and civilians met in Méjannes-le-Clap, in the Cévennes for three days. “The army provides logistical support to this organization, by providing tents and transport,” specifies Pastor Etienne Waechter, head of the Protestant chaplaincy since 2017.
Renewal of generations
Created in 2005 in the wake of the French Council of Muslim Worship, the Muslim chaplaincy also wanted to organize its pilgrimage five years later, this time to Mecca. “The creation of the Muslim chaplaincy and the establishment of a pilgrimage shortly after inevitably took us by surprise at the time,” recalls General François Chauvancy. “It was easy to read in it a benevolence from politics, which was linked to two realities: a concern for fairness in relation to other faiths, and recognition of the presence of Muslim soldiers in the ranks.
In the absence of religious statistics in the army – these are prohibited – their proportion is generally estimated to be the same as in the general population. “It was therefore necessary to adapt the organization to reality,” continues General Chauvancy. From 2010, around a hundred French soldiers left for Saudi Arabia, during a trip organized by the association supporting Muslim chaplaincy for the benefit of soldiers and their families. “Military pilgrims will have to take permission to go to Mecca and will pay for their trip. Under no circumstances will the army make a plane available to them; the Ministry of Defense will pay nothing,” explained in 2009 in The world the chief military chaplain of the Muslim faith at the time, Abdelkader Arbi. However, the initiative stopped shortly before the Covid pandemic broke out. It has not resumed since, mainly for technical reasons. Saudi Arabia now requires pilgrims from Western countries to use a state application, Nusuk, to organize their trip. What the Muslim military chaplaincy does not want to do. “Today, pilgrimages to Mecca are not yet relevant,” explains Nadir Mehidi, his successor. Not yet, but maybe they will be soon.
At a time when the question of recruitment is more acute than ever – there was a shortage of 2,000 new recruits in 2023, while the army must attract 16,000 new soldiers to ensure generational renewal – the armies are counting on the cohesion factor that chaplains represent. Pilgrimages, although popular with a minority – the 5,000 soldiers of the PMI of Lourdes are a drop in the bucket in the 200,000 of the French army – and little known to the general public, have a bright future ahead of them.
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