For French Catholics, small island is testimony to priests' suffering

Published: 2006-10-26

ILE MADAME, France (CNS) -- On a melancholy bend in France's Atlantic coast, a narrow causeway leads across choppy gray-green waters to a low-lying deserted island. Ile Madame, in the River Charente estuary, is not mentioned in guidebooks, and few tourists venture here. For local Catholics, though, it remains a symbol of the violent anti-clericalism that erupted in their country more than two centuries ago. "It's a small, desolate place -- but it speaks eloquently about testimony and suffering," said Msgr. Yves Guiochet, vicar general of La Rochelle Diocese. In April 1794, during the French Revolution, 829 detained Catholic priests, ages 28-77, were stripped of their breviaries and crucifixes and crammed aboard a pair of slave ships anchored off Rochefort to await deportation to Guyana. Half of them were diocesan priests from 35 French departments, but some were Cistercians, Carmelites and Capuchins. Some had been marched 500 miles to reach the Charente mud flats. There was little food, and no medicine or doctors. Within nine months, two-thirds of the priests had died.

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