2024-11-22
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In past centuries, France sent out more missionaries than any other country to spread Christianity in Africa.
Now African missionaries are coming to baptize Europeans.
Before, it was our priests who went to Africa.
Now it's the turn of African priests to come here.
They're needed because France is facing a priest shortage of dramatic proportions.
For every 10 priests France had in the year 2000, it now has only three.
To bishops told me that without the Africans, the church in France would collapse.
I'm John Laurenson and you're listening to the documentary on the BBC World Service on this week's Heart and Soul, which explores personal approaches to faith.
I've come to Alsace in the east of France to meet one of the two and a half thousand African priests in this country.
They've been sent as missionaries by bishops back home in countries like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Cameroon, and Burkina FAS to help keep Europe's Christian communities alive.
Father Michel Mukendi at the wheel of his small car, singing a hymn from the Congo as we zip through the Alsatian countryside.
The villages we pass are called things like Reinhardt's, Munster, and Dimsthal because for much of its history, Alsace was German.
Father Michel is the parish priest of Marmoutier, a small town not far from the city of Strasbourg.
But that's not all.
He spends quite a lot of his time crisscrossing these rolling green hills in his car.
Because there's such a shortage of priests, his flock is spread over 11 villages with 12 churches.
I am Father Michel Mukwendi Mbayabu.