A crowd of young people gathers around the panels displaying the programme. After breakfast and daily prayer, it is time for intellectual encounters. The five hundred or so young Christians present at the Fête du Poudre, which will be held at the end of August in La Bussière-sur-Ouche (Côte-d’Or), will have the choice between lectures on various themes, such as “Spiritual and political idolatry” or “The construction of a Christian anti-fascism”. Another lecture is striking for the simplicity and meaning of the two words that make up its title: “Struggle and contemplation”.
It takes its name from the group of young Christian ecologists presented by Benoît Halgand, 26, a polytechnician and self-proclaimed “bifurcator” of the path forged by his main engineering school. This morning’s speaker embodies a new type of environmental activist: one who takes responsibility for combining his faith with his commitment, one for whom one can no longer do without the other. “After spending several years in climate struggles, I felt like I no longer had energy, I had become dark and critical. I longed to find unity in my life.”says.
After completing his studies, he spent a year at the Abbey of Hautecombe in Savoy. A year of theological training and community life. “I decided to create a church place for the young people of that time, because I felt it was necessary to bring a Christian voice to the ecological struggles”He explains again. In September 2022, a handful of young people with similar aspirations meet at the Saint-Ignace church in Paris to pray. They launched a WhatsApp group, called “Struggle and Contemplation”, and met once a month. They were soon joined by other young people from the Christian communities they frequent: the Political Fraternity of Chemin neuf, the Dorothy (Christian café in Ménilmontant) or the Maison Magis, a third place in 6my district of Paris, inaugurated by the Jesuits.
Foot washing and marginality
In 2023, the group no longer hesitates to brandish the Christian flag when it joins social and ecological struggles: demonstrations against pension reform, mobilisation against the construction of the A69, fighting against TotalEnergies’ Eacop project. These green Catholics imagine actions that differentiate them from other activists. For example, on 6 April 2023, during one of the last demonstrations against pension reform, which takes place on Holy Thursday, they reinterpret the washing of the feet – a gesture in memory of that practiced by Jesus Christ towards his apostles – by polishing the shoes of the demonstrators.
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