In Paris, the fight for the Holy Mass and against the liturgical decadence of the Novus Ordo began in the chapel of the now defunct Laennec Hospital under Mgr Germain Ducaud-Bourget (1897-1984), PaixLiturgique.fr (31 August) recalls.
Mgr Germain Ducaud-Bourget died forty years ago, on 12 June 1984.
When Paul VI made his Novus Ordo liturgical books "compulsory", he quietly continued to celebrate Mass every Sunday in the large chapel of the hospital, which was attended by an ever-increasing number of people.
Throughout France, a number of courageous priests refused to use the Paul VI liturgy, despite the sanctions imposed by their angry bishops.
Mgr. Ducaud-Bourget, an extraordinary personality, priest of the diocese of Paris, man of letters, former member of the Resistance and former chaplain of the Sovereign Order of Malta, had been chaplain at the Laennec Hospital in the rue de Sèvres since 1961.
In 1971, the anti-Catholic Cardinal Marty of Paris forced him to resign. The 74-year-old priest began to officiate in a makeshift chapel set up in a former shop on rue de la Cossonnerie, near Les Halles, and on Sundays in meeting rooms rented for the occasion on rue de Rennes or rue Las Cases at the Musée Social.
Other priests joined him to preach, hear confessions and celebrate several consecutive masses.
From 1974, they also moved to a second location, setting up another makeshift chapel on the Avenue des Ternes.
But Mgr Ducaud-Bourget's greatest coup was the occupation of the church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet.
On Sunday 26 February 1977, he invited his Catholics to a Mass in the Salle de la Mutualité. But the Mass was not held there.
The faithful went in small groups to the neighbouring church of Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet. When it was full, the Novus Ordo priest, Abbé Pierre Bellego, was expelled.
Mgr Ducaud-Bourget and the priests accompanying him then celebrated a series of Masses in the church. And they stayed. That was 48 years ago.
The permanent establishment of the Holy Mass Catholics in St-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet was the result of the government's arbitration, which was not unhappy to annoy the left-wing archbishop, Cardinal Marty (+1994), and his auxiliary, Mgr Georges Gilson, 95.
It is true that the Cardinal obtained a ruling from the 1st Chamber of the Court of Appeal ordering the Catholics to leave the church and allowing the parish priest, Abbé Bellego, to call the police to evict them.
But when the police prefecture received Bellego's request, it took the view that enforcing the court order could seriously disrupt public order, given the determination of the church's occupants. And for 48 years the police have not intervened.
The matter was also raised by Michel Prince Poniatowski, President Giscard d'Estaing's Minister of the Interior, and then by his successor, Christian Bonnet.
Jacques Chirac, who had since been elected Mayor of Paris, intervened with Cardinal Marty, asking him to find a peaceful solution by giving Mgr Ducaud-Bourget an empty church.
Michel Poniatowski invoked 'religious freedom' [so dear to the followers of Vatican II] in favour of the Catholics before the conciliar archbishop.
Since then, Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet, on the boulevard Saint-Germain, has been a bulwark of the Catholic liturgy.
#newsQvqtrhrzvv