Report lays bare threats to France’s Catholic patrimony

A new study offers the most accurate picture yet of the state of French churches and chapels.

A total of 2,666 churches and chapels in 69 French dioceses have reported break-ins since the turn of the millennium, according to a study published Monday.

The Church of St. Eugenie in Biarritz, southwestern France. Diego Delso via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A 19-page report published Nov. 18 by the French bishops’ conference said that 1,476 churches were also damaged and 396 desecrated in the same period.

The study — published weeks before the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris five years after a devastating fire — offered the most accurate picture yet of the state of France’s religious patrimony.

Concern that the country’s Catholic heritage is at risk has grown since the 2019 fire at Notre-Dame, as well as other high-profile incidents such as a 2020 fire at Nantes Cathedral.

In July, a blaze broke out at Rouen Cathedral and in September, fire devastated a historic church in Saint-Omer.

The new report did not focus on these widely reported events, but instead offered an overview of the condition of French churches. 

It found that 411 churches and chapels have been deconsecrated in 87 dioceses between 1905 and 2023. A 2015 study had suggested that only 137 buildings were deconsecrated from 1905 to 2015 in 94 dioceses.

The report was written in response to a July 2022 request from French senators Pierre Ouzoulias and Anne Ventalon for an inventory of the nation’s church buildings. The Church launched a nationwide process known as the États généraux du patrimoine religieux (EGPR) in September 2023.

As part of the process, researchers sent France’s 94 dioceses a roughly 60-page document with 150 questions about their church buildings, the French Catholic daily La Croix reported. Eighty-seven dioceses responded, at least partially, to the questionnaire.

In a Nov. 18 address marking the end of the process, bishops’ conference president Archbishop Éric de Moulins-Beaufort noted that the country’s system for preserving religious buildings was shaped by the strict separation of Church and state in the wake of the French Revolution.

He said that a 1905 law offered a “clear framework for the allocation of property” when it decreed that the state owned the country’s cathedrals while local authorities owned churches. 

“Places of worship are used exclusively and in their entirety for religious purposes, and access to them is free of charge,” Moulins-Beaufort said in his speech at the bishops’ conference headquarters in Paris.

The report said there are 149 cathedrals and 150 basilicas in France, as well as 40,068 churches and chapels owned by local authorities in 87 dioceses, and a further 2,145 church buildings owned by dioceses.

Between 1905 and 2023, 326 local authority-owned buildings fell into disuse — many more than the 2015 estimate of 140.

Almost 1,700 buildings in 69 dioceses are currently closed year-round for reasons such as depopulation or health and safety concerns. In the 69 dioceses, 149 Church buildings have been demolished since 2000.

At least 16 churches are currently under construction in France, the report said.

In his speech, Moulins-Beaufort addressed the debate surrounding French culture minister Rachida Dati’s proposal for a 5 euro entry fee at Notre-Dame de Paris after it reopens Dec. 7.

Dati has argued that the fee would raise 75 million euros (almost $80 million) a year that could be used to maintain churches across France. 

But Moulins-Beaufort observed that France’s churches and cathedrals had always been open to all.

“Keeping them closed to prevent damage, restricting or complicating entry for security reasons, charging admission to maintain them, would all be ways of betraying their original vocation,” he said. 

“In our societies, where everything is monitored and many things are accessible as long as you pay, the churches and cathedrals of France are a magnificent exception. They are places of free access, an interesting expression, where anyone can enter, where anyone can leave, where no one has a right acquired by payment to receive a particular service.” 

The archbishop said he hoped France’s churches and cathedrals would be “preserved from the increasing commodification of cultural sites.”

Speaking after Moulins-Beaufort at the event at the bishops’ conference headquarters, Dati made a fresh appeal for an entry fee.

“I know that this proposal has been the subject of debate. But I find it coherent, and I would like us to study it seriously together,” she said.

Addressing Moulins-Beaufort directly, she added: “I didn’t have the impression that I was ‘commodifying’ religious heritage, Archbishop, far from it.”