Benoît Feur, responsible for the pastoral care of tourism in the parish of Biscarrosse (Landes)
“Biscarrosse is a small town nestled between the ocean and large expanses of fresh water, and families love it. During the summer, we therefore go from 15,000 to 150,000 inhabitants on average.
When the new pastor of our pastoral ensemble arrived a few years ago, he immediately warned the team: “We can’t afford not to plan for the 150,000! » So we decided to dynamite the summer program of the parish by setting up a pastoral program for tourism. Our objective was to understand the needs of vacationers, who are more urban and wealthy.
These vacationers have little to do with our usual parishioners: they are rather young and they arrive at mass with a simple mobile phone in their pocket and sunglasses. They come to relax and don’t particularly want to hear the traditional “purring” of the harmonium.
Thus, for the summer, our pastoral develops its activities around games and music. In general, ideas flow in all directions and they are ambitious. That’s how every year we organize masses at the water’s edge, on the shores of a lake. My dream would be to be able to celebrate it on the water, with paddles, canoes… but that’s hard to do!
During the weekends, the team maintains a permanence in the parish churches and everyone is free to pick up what they want from various activities, between twenty minutes and an hour. This can take the form of a breakfast together, a time of spiritual exchange in small groups, a prayer…
To make people want to enter churches, we had the idea of calling on outside talent, and this summer we have a great group of musicians straight from Polynesia. They stand out against the background because they are all tall, covered in tattoos, have long hair and they have a very different way of bringing the liturgy to life with lively songs.
We are not organizing all this with the aim of meeting the sole need of tourists who have come to consume, to spend. We do it because we are concerned to show a Church open to all, living, and not frozen in old stones. »
Father Antoine Nouwavi, parish priest of Les Sables d’Olonne (Vendée)
“In summer, in Les Sables d’Olonne, parish life is a bit like a festival. While we are 47,000 year-round residents, the city receives between 250,000 and 300,000 people over the summer vacation period.
This means that our churches are changing: all of a sudden, they are full to bursting and the calendar quickly becomes full. In a single week, the parish church in the town center can celebrate around ten masses. We even have one in extraordinary shape to be able to accommodate all the faithful, and a two-hour adoration, every day of the week.
To enable this large system, we rely heavily on vacationers who settle here during the summer. Many Parisian and city families come every year, and they do not hesitate to take part in the liturgy of the celebrations. We even have a luxury service, since we welcome an organist from London, who plays on Sundays, and choirs who sing spontaneously in the churches, outside the hours of celebrations.
In fact, vacationers become new parishioners for a few weeks, and they replace the older practitioners that we have over the year. At this time, the inhabitants of Les Sables do not have much time to take part in pastoral care, because they are already very busy receiving their children and grandchildren on vacation at home! They see the arrival of newcomers as a wave of freshness and it’s a fairly euphoric, festive period.
You should know that several foreign and religious communities come expressly during the summer: this year, we are welcoming sisters from Belarus. Managing all these comings and goings is not always easy, because the priests sometimes arrive without warning and we do not always know how to accommodate them, nor how to organize the liturgical service at the last moment.
For me, it’s a big period of work, but it’s also a blessing! As a priest, I never see such a solid and dynamic community as in these summer moments, which are very precious for the parish. »
Father Emmanuel Boureima Kinda, parish priest of Gordes (Vaucluse)
“Our parish church is located at the very top of Gordes, a village perched on a rock in the Luberon. It is particularly pretty and it attracts nearly 400 people every Sunday during the tourist peak of the summer, while there are more like fifteen during the winter…
During this very special time, we are therefore completely adapting our liturgy. A second Gospel reading can be done in English and German, as we have many foreigners in the area. We try to involve them in mass, even if they are just passing through and are often a bit shy, not easy to motivate.
It may seem surprising, but the main issue for the parish of Gordes remains parking spaces. It is very (very very) difficult to park in a town perched on a rock where thousands of tourists flock every day. It is classified as one of the “most beautiful villages in France” and there is a quota of parking spaces to respect. Local parishioners therefore tend to complain of not being able to easily access the church during the summer, and of seeing their daily lives disrupted.
Faced with this situation, we must find compromises. A few years ago, we negotiated with the municipality so that the agents would not ticket parked cars during Sunday mass, between 10 a.m. and noon. But it’s a regular tip, because the vast majority of tourists don’t know it and complain, when leaving the church, that they have paid for parking all the same. Some practitioners therefore prefer to refer to the sanctuary of Notre-Dame-des-Lumières, which celebrates services a few kilometers away.
Summer is a very dynamic period for us, and the months of September and October allow us to slowly come back down. At this time, it is the motorhomes of retired tourists who land in locations provided by the municipality, in a quieter atmosphere. Then winter arrives, and it’s a bit of a blues for the young shopkeepers and the volunteers of the parish, because all the euphoria of tourism stops… for a short time. »
Father Christophe Lafaye, parish priest of Sarlat-la-Canéda (Dordogne)
“My parish is in the heart of Périgord, and the town of Sarlat welcomes tourists of all styles [environ 500 000 chaque année, d’avril à octobre]. There are people who seek a form of spirituality in their holidays, like the groups of scouts who set up their tents in the Dordogne, or hikers on the Camino de Santiago who sleep at the presbytery. But most tourists are not practicing and are more fond of castles and canoeing.
Of course, we take advantage of the massive arrival of tourists strolling through the streets of Sarlat, because it is an entirely medieval town, and shows are organized everywhere in the streets. But, in the midst of all these people, our parish sometimes has difficulty finding its place.
The cathedral of Sarlat has a central place in the physiognomy of the city and is one of the few free monuments. But it is often perceived as a tourist element among many others, and one can have the feeling that it is more a place of passage than a real point of fall. The configuration of the premises does not necessarily help. For example, we would like to do more exhibits to allow people to walk through the whole church. But the Romanesque architecture of the place makes it difficult for people to walk around, so they often stay at the entrance.
The parish team, made up of year-round residents, therefore tries to organize a permanence at the entrance to provide information, free Gospel booklets… Some summers, we called on a team of volunteers at the Outside: a Christian association came on purpose, with the aim of teaching the history of the place, and offering a spiritual exchange. But the participants were a little disappointed to see that people did not really want to be taken care of.
In general, tourists prefer to participate in guided tours where the cathedral is simply on the itinerary. Or they come to the cathedral for its many concerts, but these are organized by the Tourist Office. It is therefore with this somewhat wobbly position that we have to deal. Despite everything, the parish benefits from a big facelift, because the pews are filled with families during mass, for several months! »
‘Parish life is a bit like a festival’: Churches in tourist towns prepare for summer