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Community of Saint Martin
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Community of Saint Martin
The Community of Saint Martin is a Catholic public clerical association of pontifical right, comprising priests and deacons. It was founded in 1976 by Fr Jean-François Guérin, a French priest from the Archdiocese of Tours, under the protection of the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa. The community focuses on traditionalist liturgy, with its priests wearing cassocks and offering Novus Ordo Mass often in Latin, with Gregorian chant and facing ad orientem.
In 2023, the community included 185 priests and deacons and more than 100 seminarians. Priests of the community work in parishes, schools, nursing homes, chaplaincies, or sanctuaries in 30 dioceses in France, Germany, Austria, Cuba and Italy. The priests and deacons of the community are sent in groups of at least three to live and pray together in a spiritual and practical brotherhood.
Between 1965 and 1976, Guérin was active in Paris. He was chaplain of the Basilica of Sacré Cœur in Montmartre, and he had an important apostolate with the youth as many had chosen him as their spiritual director. While many of these youths chose to enter a religious order, often in the Benedictine and Carmelite traditions, some felt that their call was to become secular priests in the same way that Guérin was. This meant living their priesthood in community with others and pursuing his liturgical spirit rooted in the Latin and Gregorian tradition of the Roman rite, and in the liturgical movement as it found its clear expression in the Second Vatican Council.
As Cardinal Siri sought to help the French Church to promote the renewal of priestly training, he received Fr. Guérin and his first seminarians in his archdiocese in 1976. Thus the Community of Saint Martin was founded in Italy to give priests to the Catholic Church in France. Guérin and his students established themselves in the Capuchin convent of Genoa-Voltri. The seminarians followed the academic part of their training in the Genoa seminary, while Guérin took charge of their human and spiritual formation.
By 1979, the first ordinations to priesthood took place.
In 1983 the Community got its first pastoral mission in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon in south-eastern France. In the following years, other French bishops entrusted parishes to the Community.
In 1993 there was an opportunity for the Mother House to move from Italy and to establish the Community's seminary in France in the village of Candé-sur-Beuvron, near Blois in the Loire Valley. After twenty years there, the Community moved to Évron in north-western France to accommodate the sharp increase in vocations.
Since 2010, abbé Paul Préaux is the general moderator of the community, reelected in 2016 an again in 2022.
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Community of Saint Martin
The Community of Saint Martin is a Catholic public clerical association of pontifical right, comprising priests and deacons. It was founded in 1976 by Fr Jean-François Guérin, a French priest from the Archdiocese of Tours, under the protection of the Italian cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Archbishop of Genoa. The community focuses on traditionalist liturgy, with its priests wearing cassocks and offering Novus Ordo Mass often in Latin, with Gregorian chant and facing ad orientem.
In 2023, the community included 185 priests and deacons and more than 100 seminarians. Priests of the community work in parishes, schools, nursing homes, chaplaincies, or sanctuaries in 30 dioceses in France, Germany, Austria, Cuba and Italy. The priests and deacons of the community are sent in groups of at least three to live and pray together in a spiritual and practical brotherhood.
Between 1965 and 1976, Guérin was active in Paris. He was chaplain of the Basilica of Sacré Cœur in Montmartre, and he had an important apostolate with the youth as many had chosen him as their spiritual director. While many of these youths chose to enter a religious order, often in the Benedictine and Carmelite traditions, some felt that their call was to become secular priests in the same way that Guérin was. This meant living their priesthood in community with others and pursuing his liturgical spirit rooted in the Latin and Gregorian tradition of the Roman rite, and in the liturgical movement as it found its clear expression in the Second Vatican Council.
As Cardinal Siri sought to help the French Church to promote the renewal of priestly training, he received Fr. Guérin and his first seminarians in his archdiocese in 1976. Thus the Community of Saint Martin was founded in Italy to give priests to the Catholic Church in France. Guérin and his students established themselves in the Capuchin convent of Genoa-Voltri. The seminarians followed the academic part of their training in the Genoa seminary, while Guérin took charge of their human and spiritual formation.
By 1979, the first ordinations to priesthood took place.
In 1983 the Community got its first pastoral mission in the diocese of Fréjus-Toulon in south-eastern France. In the following years, other French bishops entrusted parishes to the Community.
In 1993 there was an opportunity for the Mother House to move from Italy and to establish the Community's seminary in France in the village of Candé-sur-Beuvron, near Blois in the Loire Valley. After twenty years there, the Community moved to Évron in north-western France to accommodate the sharp increase in vocations.
Since 2010, abbé Paul Préaux is the general moderator of the community, reelected in 2016 an again in 2022.