“We honor and cherish the memory of all those who have made this land a Christian one. We desire to live and die ever faithful to the spirit and civilization of St. Clothilde and St. Genevieve, of St. Louis and of St. Joan of Arc, of St. Vincent de Paul, St. Bernadette, of the Cure of Ars and of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus.”

Jean MADIRAN (1920-2013)
French journalist and essayist

“We are, and we wish to be, members of this spiritual race, sharing this spiritual blood, this spiritual instinct. We wish to do this so far as God wishes, and even with all of our weaknesses; to be partakers of the grace of these saints of France, partakers of a grace which is incarnated for each of us in the face of our mother during our childhood, in the uprightness of our father, in the memory of our father’s father and our mother’s mother, from whom we have learned humble fidelity to the duties of daily life, confidence in the Heart of Jesus, the recitation of the rosary, and a certain way of walking through life.
These superhuman ideals have for each of us a human face, an inherited tenderness, a hope transmitted here and nowhere else – the mark of a certain landscape, a cemetery next to a church, a cross alongside the road, and the slope of a hill standing out against the sky. The duty of impiety has not yet been promulgated. Should it ever be, the promulgation would have no rights whatsoever.”

Jean MADIRAN (1920-2013)
French journalist and essayist