Nearly 120 years after their beatification, the Carmelites of Compiègne are recognized as saints by the Catholic Church. Pope Francis relaunched their cause in 2022, thus acceding to the request of the bishops of France, by accepting a special procedure called “equipollent canonization”. This procedure makes it possible to lift the obligation of recognition of a miracle, in principle necessary for canonization. The blessed are then recognized as saints by simple declaration from the Pope, without any special ceremony. This is what Francis did on December 18, 2024.
Accused by the revolutionary tribunal of plotting against the Revolution, these 16 nuns were guillotined on the Place de la Nation on July 17, 1794. Catholic memory reports that they sang hymns in the carts which took them to the scaffold. They become symbols of fidelity to the faith and courage in the face of certain death.
Already recognized in 1906 as martyrs “in hatred of faith” (i.e. killed “in hatred of the faith”) during their beatification by Pope Saint Pius X, they now become models of faith for the universal Church. But their memory, transmitted in particular by the Dialogues of the Carmelites by Georges Bernanos (and the opera by Francis Poulenc), raises a very French problem: that of anti-religious violence committed by revolutionaries, and their reception today. A question that is still largely taboo in France, both in historiography and in society, as noted by Paul Chopelin, a specialist in the political and religious history of the revolutionary period. The latter places the destiny of the Carmelites in their historical context, highlighting the complexity of the debates over the period.
