PARIS (OSV News) — As the world watches Rome for the election of a new pope, the southern French city of Avignon reflects on its own deep papal history — and the legacy of martyrdom that accompanied the loss of the papacy’s temporal power in France.
On May 11, Archbishop François Fonlupt and neighboring bishops will mark the 100th anniversary of the beatification of the Martyrs of Orange — 32 religious sisters guillotined during the French Revolution for refusing to renounce their faith.
Avignon and the nearby plain of the Comtat Venaissin were a papal state from the 13th century. Six conclaves were held there, and seven popes resided there from 1309 to 1377. At that time, Rome had lost its political importance, and the popes had settled in Avignon, which had the strategic geographical position of a European crossroads.
Located between Italy and Spain, on the banks of the Rhône, a major river for river traffic at the time, Avignon thus became the capital of Christendom, and a major architectural and artistic center, for nearly a century.
To this day, the “conclave room” of the Palace of the Popes — an immense fortified castle in the heart of the city, built in the 14th century — is a major attraction.
But papal authority over Avignon came to an end with the French Revolution of 1789. On Sept. 14, 1791, a decree of the National Assembly in Paris ordered its annexation, and that of the Comtat Venaissin, by France.
A town located just 6 miles away from Avignon, Orange, soon became a place where the nuns — martyrs of the French Revolution — were guillotined.
Father Michel Berger, parish pastor of Orange’s Cathedral of Notre Dame de Nazareth, which houses a painting depicting the nuns climbing the scaffold, told OSV News that “The anti-religious policy of the French Revolution gradually began to be applied in the Avignon region after it was annexed to France.”
He said, “The revolutionaries first drew up an inventory of church property, particularly that of convents. Later, they confiscated it. Then, in October 1792, the nuns had to leave their convents and were forbidden to wear religious habits.”
“They belonged to different congregations,” Father Berger explained. There were 16 Ursuline sisters, 13 Sisters Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, two Bernardine sisters and one Benedictine sister.
“It broke their hearts to be driven from their convent. They initially scattered, and some returned to their families. Then they began to regroup discreetly in houses, to continue their life of work and prayer,” he told OSV News.
“The arrests began in 1794,” the priest recounted. “Between the end of March and the beginning of May 1794, 42 nuns of all ages were arrested. They were imprisoned in cellars, and condemned by the newly created Popular Commission of Orange as ‘fanatics and enemies of the Revolution.’ Between June 19 and July 26, 1794, 32 of them were guillotined, along with 300 other people, including 36 priests and monks.”
In 1832, a chapel, known as the Chapel of Gabet, was built over the mass graves where the bodies of the nuns and 300 other victims had been thrown. “Every year, we organize a popular pilgrimage to this place on their liturgical feast day, July 9,” Father Berger said. “The people here like to ask for the intercession of these nuns who frequented the same places as them.”
Father Berger hopes that the cause of the Martyrs of Orange will also soon extend to canonization,pointing out that the cause is complex “because they came from different convents and had different origins.”
But for Father Berger, it is precisely the way in which the nuns lived together in the face of death, despite their differences, that is remarkable. “The spiritual life they led together is magnificent and deserves to be held up as an example of unity today,” he explained.
On May 11, the bishops of the Orange region will pray at the sites where the nuns lived and died. This commemoration will take on special significance given the election of the new pope — and in a region deeply marked by its centuries-old affiliation with the Holy See.
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