Generation Léon! Maybe it is after all the "new France"? This young and mixed crowd gathered in Saint Denis, where for one improbable evening we found both Bally Bagayoko and Father Raffray, the Scouts of France and the Scouts of Europe, Glorious and the Holy Tunic... As if we had witnessed that evening a new generation of Catholics, not truly born before our eyes - it had already been born in the emotion of Notre-Dame in flames, in the renewal of catechumenate or the success of the pilgrimage to Chartres - but finally forging an identity, finding a common denominator. Or simply a name. Generation Léon! Catholic youth aware of its differences but no longer wanting to make them fractures. A generation reconciled with itself, knowing it is too much of a minority to afford the luxury of being divided. The elders have alternately been annoyed or delighted, according to their respective sensitivities, in the face of Benedict XVI and Francis: a right-wing pope, a left-wing pope... Léon neither denies the doctrinal demands of the former nor the inexhaustible call to charity of the latter, but invites with his peaceful bonhomie and discreet joy to supplant divisions, in order to focus on the only thing that truly matters: to make every effort to proclaim the gospel... so that the world may have life! For this generation Léon is alive: in motion, constantly searching for new projects (new pilgrimages, new media, new missionary works…). It arrives perhaps less self-assured than the previous generations: aware of its own doubts, the fragilities of the ecclesial institution that it has not stopped loving for all that, and especially aware of the dizzying challenges that await it. Starting with this one: how to continue to keep humanity alive despite the increasingly pressing temptation to plunge into the "paradise of machines" that the pope described with Bernanos' words? Thus, in a spectacular staging worthy of the most beautiful shows at Puy du Fou, this initial response came as an obvious revelation under the light of fireworks: the crowd of saints who have woven fifteen centuries of Christian history in France are, more surely than the pillars of Notre-Dame, a living support to build this emerging generation. Their example is also a call. "You are the saints of France!" the pope declared. Saints who cannot help but take selfies, who can no longer even manage to respect a few seconds of silence in a stadium and who all posted their memories of that night on their stories as soon as they got home - but after all, isn't the true essence of saints to have been of their time? Yet the times are here, the church bells still ring, we have seen in the festive city young and old rush through the streets to gather on the path of the pope and this Léon, who is surely neither the most charismatic nor the most original of Peter's successors, managed, just by looking at it with his joyful eye, to give that scattered crowd a deep sense of unity and collective pride. Long live the pope and long live France! (translated)
