The French worker-priest movement, one of the century's most exciting and most debated religious experiments, finally died last week after long illness.
To win back France's Communist-led, largely unchurched working classes, the French cardinals in 1943 founded the "Mission to Paris." Specially trained young priests began to take jobs in factories to pursue their evangelizing mission more effectively; wearing overalls, they held fulltime jobs, said Mass and performed other pastoral duties during off hours. By 1953, it was obvious that something had gone wrong: of almost 150 worker-priests, some 20 had married and...
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