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On the flight back from WYD in Rio in 2013, when asked about the black satchel he was carrying on board the plane and which had intrigued journalists, Pope Francis humorously replied that it did not contain “the key to the atomic bomb” but “a book on St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, to whom I have devotion.”
The nun, whom the Pope affectionately calls “Teresita” — little Thérèse — is his most intimate link with French spiritual writers. A year ago, on October 15, 2023, the Argentine Pope dedicated an apostolic exhortation to her, with a title in French: C’est la confiance. In it, the Pope highlighted “the extraordinary light and love” spread by this 19th-century nun, who died aged 24 in 1897 and was proclaimed a Doctor of the Church by John Paul II 100 years later.
“Thérèse testifies to the definitive victory of Jesus, through his passion, death and resurrection, over all the powers of evil,” Francis says in this profound text, which went relatively unnoticed in the context of the Synod and a saturated international news agenda. “At a time when human beings are obsessed with grandeur and new forms of power,” Pope Francis observes, “she points out to us the little way.” This nicely highlights the paradoxical notion of “little greatness.”
Francis, a disciple of Charles de Foucauld
This notion of smallness is also found in the other great French saint often mentioned by the current pontiff: Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), whom he canonized on May 15, 2022. The French hermit was the architect of a new approach to dialogue with Muslims.
He also largely inspired Francis’ previous encyclical, Fratelli tutti, published in autumn 2020, against the sad backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. The text opens with a reference to St. Francis of Assisi and concludes with a prayer by Charles de Foucauld, whom the Pope recalls “directed his ideal of total surrender to God towards an identification with the poor, abandoned in the depths of the African desert.”
In a world increasingly polarized between rich and poor, Francis reminds us that “only by identifying with the least did he come at last to be the brother of all. May God inspire that dream in each one of us,” he urges.
Another French figure appreciated by Pope Francis is St. Francis de Sales, to whom he dedicated an apostolic letter, Totum amoris est, released on December 28, 2022.
“St. Francis de Sales felt that there was no better place to find God, and to help others to find him, than in the hearts of the women and men of his time. He had learned this, from his earliest years, by developing a keen insight both into himself and into the human heart,” he says in the text.
The Pope’s link with French spirituality also includes authors he studied as part of his training as a Jesuit, such as Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Michel de Certeau (1925-1986), as well as older, lesser-known authors such as Louis Lallemant (1558-1635), Jean-Joseph Surin (1600-1665), and Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751). He drew on their writings for food for thought on spiritual discernment, which nourished his life as a religious in a critical sense in relation to certain forms of asceticism, without denying the necessary radicality of any spiritual commitment.
Thus Pope Francis draws from the “eldest daughter of the Church” for devotions that are both popular worldwide, and other lesser known gems.
A French devotion extended to the world
With his new encyclical Dilexit nos — “He loved us,” this time dedicated to “the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ” — Pope Francis is likely to refer once again to French figures. Indeed, it was from France that devotion to the Sacred Heart was popularized in the 17th century by St. Jean Eudes and then St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, after an apparition at Paray-le-Monial in Burgundy.
St. Margaret Mary’s spiritual director, St. Claude La Colombière, was a Jesuit.
Announcing last June the publication of a document on this theme, the Pope specified that this initiative was part of a cycle of celebrations dedicated to this traditional form of devotion. These events opened on December 27, 2023, “on the 350th anniversary of the first manifestation of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque.” These 18 months of festivities will end on June 27, 2025.
And today we celebrate...