A group of French Muslims, who describe themselves as an “association sharing the message of Islam with non-Muslims, particularly traditionalist Catholics”, has lamented the papal visit to France and said that France will once again become Catholic.
Miséricorde pour l’Humanité France, meaning Mercy for Mankind France, posted on X that they felt like a “CIA agent helplessly witnessing the return of the Soviet Union”. The group further predicted: “In 45 years, France will become Catholic again, and we’ll be left with nothing but our tears.”
The post further explained that “the Catholics are much better organised, as well as more determined, than us Muslims and even than the Zionists; you have to know how to recognise the strength of the Catholic international.” The group concluded the post by declaring that “the American Catholics will now flood the world with their soft power, to the detriment of both Muslim spiritual hegemony in Western Europe and the Zionist lobby.”
Miséricorde pour l’Humanité France primarily exists as an online group. On the group’s YouTube page, they organise debates on common talking points around Islam today, for example Muhammad’s consummation of his marriage to Aisha when she was just nine years old, violence in Islam and the Quran’s historical context. These feature the group debating popular internet Catholic apologists such as Abbé Guy Pagès.
Another video uses John Henry Newman’s theory of doctrinal development to argue that Catholicism is the strongest form of Christianity, but claims that Vatican II’s teaching on religious liberty represents a rupture with earlier Catholic doctrine and therefore disproves Newman’s theory, undermines Catholicism and Christianity as a whole, and leaves Islam as the more doctrinally consistent alternative.
An additional video, entitled Les catholiques traditionalistes américains reviennent de loin!(American traditionalist Catholics have come a long way!), argues that traditionalist Catholics in the United States have gone from being a marginalised minority with severely restricted access to the traditional Latin Mass to becoming an increasingly organised and influential movement.
The group’s assertion that France is in the midst of a Catholic revival is, to some extent, supported by facts. At Easter this year, there were 13,000 adult baptisms, a 270 per cent increase in just five years, with the largest cohort, 42 per cent, aged between 18 and 26. The combined number of adult and adolescent baptisms exceeds 20,000. Comparatively, there are an estimated 3,000–5,000 conversions to Islam in France per year. The statistics are even more favourable to Catholicism when one takes into account that there are also conversions outside the Easter Vigil. Alongside this, Islamic conversions, whilst many may be sincere, require only a simple profession of faith, known as the shahada, whereas Catholicism requires an extensive period of discernment and engagement with the Church.
However, due to high immigration and fertility rates, the Islamic population of the country has more than trebled since 1970, and the religion enjoys strong intergenerational transmission, meaning most people raised Muslim remain Muslim.
However, another factor to be added is the huge growth of traditionalist Catholicism in France, the branch of the Faith which the group particularly targets. This group functions in terms of fertility and intergenerational transmission at a level which is as strong as, or exceeds, that of Islam.
The religious makeup of France remains dynamic, with immigration and a rebellion against the state’s imposed secularism remaining significant factors. The coming years will show which religions are the big winners from religious shifts, but this week certainly showed the country’s Catholicism in full force.
