You may not realize it, but the Catholic faith was one of the great targets of the French Revolution, birthing martyrs and saints from persecution and bloodshed. Sixteen Carmelite nuns were beheaded in 1794 for remaining true to their vows, and nothing more. During the so-called Reign of Terror which saw revolutionaries sniffing out real and imagined conspiracies, these nuns were expelled from their monastic life and offered a choice: renounce their faith, and submit to extreme secularism, or be deemed enemies of the state.
The prioress Mother Teresa of St. Augustine proposed the sisters offer their lives for the salvation of France, fulfilling a prophetic dream from another sister a hundred years before. The act of sacrifice was offered while the nuns sang hymns and prayed, guillotined in front of a crowd faced with the consequence of madness.
Jonathan O’Brien: “I feel like this part of history has been so either misrepresented or just glossed over. If there’s basically a genocide against Catholics and thousands of martyrs that are being killed just for their faith you would think it might have at least been mentioned in history class, but it wasn’t.”
In this episode we’ll learn more about the martyrs of Compiegne who have just been declared saints by Pope Francis in December 2024. We’ll hear from Jonathan O’Brien, author of the book Called to Compiègne, who explored this tremendous story.
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Notre Dame and Catholic France
On a rainy night in Paris, the Catholic Bishop strikes the door of Notre Dame with his crozier, or staff, as French President Emmanuel Macron and mayor Anne Hidalgo look on. This ceremony on December 7, 2024, reconsecrated the Cathedral after the devastating fire in 2019.
To a Catholic, Notre Dame is God’s house. But to the French, it is part of the patrimoine, the collective French heritage and cultural identity of France. Yes, it’s still God’s house, but following the French Revolution France developed into a society governed by laicite—hyper secularism. During the Revolution, this Cathedral of Notre Dame was declared a temple of reason. Effigies were constructed on her floors. The traditional symbols and characteristics of true Catholicism, which is interwoven with France’s history, were eyed with suspicion. Priests and nuns were forced to take oaths to the republic, and those who didn’t were arrested.
I took a pilgrimage to France recently, and visited minor and major holy sites all over the country. I celebrated Mass at the cathedrals of Tours and Orleans, I prayed at the Marian apparition site of Pontmain, at the Abbaye of Mont Saint Michel, at Joan of Arc’s birthplace of Domremy La Pucelle, and where she saw the Dauphin crowned king in the cathedral of Reims.
Revolution and sainthood
These and many other sites were powerful reminders of just how Catholic France was, and is, if you know where to look.
Americans often find a kinship in the idea of the French Revolution because a democracy emerged from the ruins of monarchy. But the story of the martyrs — now saints — of Compiegne, reminds us of the brutality.
To learn more about these brave women religious I spoke with Jonathan O’Brien, a Catholic convert who was touched by the story of the nuns in Compiegne and wrote his book: Called to Compiegne. We spoke before Pope Francis formally declared the nuns as saints through what’s called equipollent canonization: the Church believes these women are in Heaven, without reported modern miracles, as is usually required.
Why Jonathan O’Brien wrote about the martyrs of Compiègne
[Transcript edited for clarity]
Jonathan O’Brien: “You know, I didn’t really know much about the French Revolution, but what I did know it was probably pretty inaccurate. Just the fact that I’m hearing that these nuns were being executed, it just stunned me and I felt like, okay: either somebody lied or they’re not telling the whole truth, so I need to dig into this further. I felt this strong draw to find out more and I was looking up everything I could on the internet. I was trying to find every book I could on it. So I can’t point to any particular instance, but it was sometime during Lent last year, I can tell you that.”
Tony: The story itself is tragic and also heroic in some ways, these nuns who become Martyrs of the French Revolution. We have documentation of their travails through all of this, and you mentioned that what you knew about the Revolution beforehand did not fully include the Church as being a victim of this. Maybe can you talk about that discovery that you made maybe through your research that the Church was really a victim, and this kind of ripples forward to modern France today?
Jonathan: “Yeah, so I’m I’m a relatively recent convert. So I just officially came into the church in 2022…
Tony: Welcome!
Jonathan: “Thank you, so with that I’ve always been into history, but since my conversion I’ve been looking at history through a much different lens. When you introduce the Catholic perspective, and when you introduce the Church into all of it and the struggle between good and evil, it’s amazing to see how all of the puzzle pieces start to fit together much better. My picture of history seems so much more coherent and in a lot of cases it’s almost like a feeling like… imagine somebody has spoken some lie in public to defame your mother. I imagine you would feel pretty indignant about that. And I feel like that’s the case with so many parts of recorded history and how it was recorded, how was passed on, and it’s like you know, you want to set the record straight. And I feel like this part of history has been so either misrepresented or just glossed over at least here in America. I can’t tell you what it’s like in France, but you know if there’s basically a genocide against Catholics and thousands of martyrs that are being killed just for their faith, you would think it might have at least been mentioned in history class, but it wasn’t. I think that indignance helped me you know, it helped spur me on to research and find out the truth.”
The story of the Carmelite nuns of Compiègne
Tony: The actual attacks on the nuns and the accusations…for example any religious icon was then just said to be some sort of tool of the monarchy or associated with political identity, but really when you look at it from a Catholic lens these are just nuns being nuns, and there was nothing particularly subversive about the life they were living.
Jonathan: “Right, right and to give a couple examples: they had a little covering that they used to cover their nativity scene every year, and during their trial the authorities accused them of sheltering cloaks of the monarchy. They refer to them as royal cloaks or something, and of course Mother Teresa of St. Augustine said ‘that’s ridiculous, I can’t believe you’re seriously trying to accuse us of something like this.’ And they said oh well, since you’re using cloaks like this to cover your nativity scene it says that you must have some kind of sympathy for the monarchy. And another instance: the Sacred Heart, that’s a very common symbol in the faith, the Sacred Heart of Jesus. So the in the Vendee in the west, where there was a rebellion, it was like a a counterrevolution because they got tired of watching their priests and nuns being evicted and executed. So they fought back. They would pin a Sacred Heart to their coat and of course the nuns of Compiegne, being nuns, they had imagery of the Sacred Heart probably everywhere. The Revolutionary government took this and tried to implicate them because of it, not that the revolution in the Vendee was even wrong, the counterrevolution I should say. But yeah, that was that was used against them. And I noticed a lot of similarities between what happened during the French Revolution and also what happened in Russia during the Bolshevik revolution, and in Spain when the Communists tried to take over, it’s almost like it all came out of the same playbook.”
When revolutions force people to act against God
Tony: Yeah, and specifically that’s forcing people to choose a loyalty other than God, really, and you see that in France as well: only particular clergy who have taken an allegiance, signed an oath document, to the opposition/the revolutionaries are the ones who are able to quote unquote ministry. But really they’re not ministering as proper clergy anymore because they’re ones who have taken this oath, and that is ultimately how these sisters are taken captive. They are coerced in a way into signing an oath, thinking that everything will be fine at the end, or being told it will be, even though — I’m reading between the lines — there was suspicion of of trusting the officials…
Jonathan: “Even when they were supposed to take an oath, they called it the oath of liberty and equality, and that was kind of a watered down version of the oath that they wanted the priests to take. [It said] the new French government basically has more claim on their allegiance than the Pope does, which is obviously false. And they were all excommunicated, the ones that did take that oath, and a lot of them later recanted. But they were expected to take this other oath that was meant for consecrated religious and they couldn’t stomach it. They refused, even though their chaplain said you can take this [oath] since this one’s water down without troubling your conscience, they still just couldn’t stomach it, and they refused to. The mayor of the town actually did something interesting: he had them all meet him one night, he just called all out in the dark and he had a blank sheet of paper. He just wanted them to sign this blank sheet of paper and eventually he convinced them to put their signatures down on this blank sheet of paper and what he did is he filled out the top of the paper with the oath of liberty and equality. Then he went all over town saying oh look I tricked the nuns of Compiegne into signing the oath. And then when they were imprisoned you know, after they were arrested before they went to Paris, they wrote up their own official retraction and made sure that the mayor took their retraction they said we will sign it with our blood if we need to.”
Suffering and martyrdom of the nuns of Compiègne
Tony: Wow, in talking about the nuns you give profiles of these martyrs and something you write, “it’s not always with sugar that God attracts his doves to him.” It seems like this is a common theme which comes through that tragedy drives these nuns, or attracts these nuns to their vocation and also tragedy ultimately is their path of Salvation in the end. I wonder if you can talk about this this thread of suffering both before, during, and leading after their vocation on Earth?
Jonathan: “Yeah I think they were called upon to have a profound witness to Christ and a real imitation of Christ. They went through the way they suffered, and all the particular ways, each way was a witness to the faith. There there was a mystic dream over a hundred years before in this monastery. There was this, she was a paralytic, Elizabeth Baptiste, and she was living in the Carmelite Monastery at Compiegne. She had this dream that Jesus came into her cell, bloody and scourged. She saw him and then she saw all the other nuns in the monastery out in the corridor after. Jesus separated the nuns: he put 16 on one side that were going to follow the lamb, and then three on the other side that weren’t going to follow the lamb. In her dream, she wanted to be one of the ones who followed the lamb, and after Jesus told her that he wanted her to take the habit and become a Carmelite, so she became a Carmelite at the monastery after that. Then almost 100 years later Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, one of our martyrs, she was the Prioress of the Monastery, she was looking through the archives and she saw this dream from almost a hundred years ago and she kind of saw the writing on the wall: everything going on at France at the time, and it was kind of a profound sign that their monastery was being called to do something greater. So she started having her nuns do this act of consecration daily where they offered themselves as a holocaust to God to appease his wrath and return France to reason and that’s exactly what happened. In the end, 16 of them were guillotined and three of them survived because they weren’t at the monastery, or they weren’t with the other sisters when they were arrested. So the dream was a profound confirmation that God’s hand was in all of this. And other than the obvious parallels with The Passion of Christ and the witness to the faith, what these women did is they showed all of us that no matter what horrors are going on around us, we always have the freedom to do the right thing and to be a good person, no matter what situation we find ourselves in. That’s that’s a big part of the faith in general that Jesus came and freed us from slavery to the devil, in the slavery of fear, and I couldn’t think of a better example of that than these 16 women.”
Secularism in modern France and Catholic history
Tony: You know, when I think about what happened to them and to France largely and then I project that forward we are living in the time of laïcité, this hyper-secularism within France where it’s under the banner of tolerance, that everybody can believe whatever they wish, but the Catholic identity is intertwined with French identity. Sometimes they deny it, but it’s there and you go to holy sites in France you can see the history of the faith there if you’re willing to look for it, but in a way it still feels hidden by this secular identity. It feels hidden by this revolutionary spirit, which as Americans it seems familiar to us, the revolutionary spirit kind of we stand up on our own, we’re independent, we’re free, but at the same time to bury Catholic identity in a way–it’s unsettling to me, a Catholic. To hear stories of how we got there in modern France, that it was through immense bloodshed, it was through immense tragedy, it’s it’s really hard to square that with freedom and liberty and these ideas that that we can really relate to as Americans. I wonder if you have any other thoughts on applying what you’ve learned really to modern France or your ideas of of secularism broadly that we see in the world today?
Jonathan: “Yeah and I mean France is the eldest daughter of the Church, and like you said their history is a Catholic history whether they like it or not. The glory of that country is because of its faith and because of what it did for the faith. Like I said in the introduction [of my book], France was known for being a longtime defender of Christendom: most of the Crusaders were French. And my hope is that, just like in our country and just like in many countries, the perspectives of the the ruling elite and certain classes and the government aren’t necessarily reflective of the values and thoughts of the people. And my hope is that the Catholic identity is so deeply ingrained in France that it’s going to see resurgence after resurgence. You know something that happened after the French Revolution, they were of course executing thousands of Catholics, they took over all religious buildings in the country, they turned the the Cathedral of Notre Dame… they did some kind of Festival to the goddess of Reason inside it, and they just defiled all these places. But by all appearances at the time it must have looked like the death blow to Catholicism in France, but it wasn’t. It experienced a resurgence, with death comes new life and that’s exactly what happened. It seems like a kind of like a longer drawn out process lately, but I think the same thing is going to happen again in the future and once people reach the end of that road of secularism — which they must be reaching near the end of it now — and realize there’s nothing but a precipice that just falls off into the abyss there. Then they’re gonna start looking elsewhere and turn around and realize that they have this long beautiful history and all these saints that that they can take the example of and learn from.”
Jonathan O’Brien’s journey to Catholicism
Tony: Yeah and the faith is still there, you can find it, but it’s it’s hard sometimes to really get to the core, something identifiable, at least to us. You say you converted in 2022, is that right 2022?
Jonathan: “Yeah that’s that’s when I had my confirmation and everything after going through RCIA, OCIA now.”
Tony: Yeah right, what brought you in to the Church and and where did you come from, if you don’t mind me asking?
Jonathan: “So I came from kind of a non-denominational background. My mom taught me how to pray when I was little and read me stories from the Bible. It was something that was always in my life, but it was never the center of my life. And when that’s the case you might think you’re a Christian but you’re really not you know it’s…my belief was nominal for a big part of my life. But then I’d say probably around 2020, I just had a profound conversion experience and I just kind of reached the end of that road of realizing that the secular world, the material world really doesn’t have anything to offer me. I kind of reached the end of myself and my own capacity and realized that I’m something more than this image I was trying to build up of myself — my whole life and portrayal on social media and everything. And I got to the point to where I was just kind of desperate in a lot of ways in my life: I was desperate spiritually, I felt alone at the time, I was desperate financially, and I felt like I had nowhere else to look but up. I started going to this Catholic Church nearby, a daily mass there and there was this older woman, she was there every morning and she gave me a rosary and I didn’t know how to pray it, but I just kind of would say the prayers I knew on it at the time. I only knew the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the St. Michael, so I would just pray those and I eventually meandered a little bit and eventually found my way into the Church. And right as I was kind of coming to that point to where I’d read all my books and everything and I realized I think this is it, this is the real church, this is the truth. Then I met my wife. She was born and raised Catholic and she helped me take that final leap of faith, because you know no matter how deep you look into it or what answers you try to find in the end whatever faith you have it it has to be faith. You’re not going to know all the answers in this life no matter what. We don’t have that capacity. So that was something that I feel like I needed her help with, because she has this simple faith: she never waivers or questions, she never did. I needed to see that example and I needed to see the example of someone that doesn’t just lean into their own understanding all the time, or try to figure everything out, or try to know everything, and I needed that. That allowed me to take that leap like I said, and you know once I did it freed me to where I no longer had to be my own Pope, I no longer had to be in this restless search for life’s meaning. I have this faith that the Church and the Magisterium of the Church have an answer for every situation and I’m free to live my life now.”
A new convert’s message about the importance of Compiègne
Tony: Wow, wow, praise God! And it is true we’re we’re all journeying together — amazing to have your wife in that way, as as a married couple should be journeying together — and helping you and and all of us as Brothers and Sisters in Christ. So with that background, you touched on this a little bit, but maybe what is something you as a relatively new convert to the Catholic faith at least, really want people to know about these Martyrs at Compiegne and the story that you really told in a beautiful way.
Jonathan: “Thank you, yeah that’s that’s a good question. I think one thing I would say being new to the faith… when you first come into the Church you have all this fervor and energy and one of my fears is that over time through the long slog of life that that will be dampened a little bit. I know it may sound weird that I read my own book, but I go back and I read it because it’s really their story, it’s not mine — I felt like I had help writing it. But reading their example, it helps reignite that flame and it helps you regain some of that fervor. I think that would be my message to everybody: just like CS Lewis said your faith can’t live on its own; just like you, it needs to be fed. So whatever whatever saints, whatever martyrs, whatever other people in the faith help keep that flame lit, keep going back to those and make sure to feed it.
Conclusion
My thanks to Jonathan O’Brien, author of Called to Compiegne. In the testimonies about the saints of Compiegne, and in experiencing Catholic France myself, I believe that the faithful have much to learn and be enriched by through French history and tradition. But the prominence of secularism and laicite in modern France, combined with changing demographics and politics, can suppress the Catholic riches, the pathways of pilgrimage and prayer, that exist there.
May we pray with the saints of Compiegne for the salvation of France, and for us all.