France: Bishops attend the Agricultural Show

A delegation of 15 bishops attended, for the first time, on February 29, 2016, the Agricultural Show at the Paris Parc des expositions.

The French bishops at the Agricultural Show.

“As the Church’s traditional network of Catholic Action in rural areas slows down, it is seeking new ways of supporting farmers,” wrote La Croix on February 26. The French daily believes this visit shows “the concern of the Church for a profession that has been profoundly destabilized,” –a profession “whose nobility it has always recognized,” and which is faced today “with multiple transformations: the urbanization of the countryside, mobility, sustainable agriculture, organic farming, etc.”

“Farmers need to feel that public opinion supports them,” Bishop Philippe Mousset of Périgueux and Sarlat, who led his confreres to the Parc des expositions, told Figaro on February 29. “They must not be left to sort things out with a one-sided view of industrial productivity-driven farming.” “Farming raises the issues of the lifestyle, the mode of consumption and the kind of society we want. In this sense, farmers have an important role to play,” he told a group of journalists. A Mass at the Church of St. Anthony of Padua, next to the Parc des expositions, ended the day.

The next morning, on March 1, several priests of the Society of St. Pius X also visited the Agricultural Show, where their cassocks did not pass unobserved.

(Sources: kipa-apic.ch – La Croix – Le Figaro – DICI no. 332, 11/03/16)