Gavin Mortimer, Author at Catholic Herald

Gavin Mortimer

Euthanasia in France: President Macron’s strategy on ‘assisted dying’ may well backfire

April 27, 2024

It has been a strange year so far in France. The country is beset by internal problems. Violent crime is soaring, drug traffcking is rife, the economy is stalling, the country’s debts mounting and the farmers revolting. Yet these all seem secondary issues for President Emmanuel Macron. His focus is societal. First, his government inscribed

‘God has undoubtedly decided to take over’: France’s continuing (and surprising) Catholic shift against secular progressivism

April 03, 2024

This year’s Easter Vigil was the busiest in years in France. Figures released last week by the bishops’ conference of France announced that 7,135 adults would receive the sacrament of baptism at the Easter Vigil. This is a 32 per cent increase on 2023 when 5,463 adults were baptised. This is an encouraging trend that

Why French farmers have the support of the Church in their protest movement

February 05, 2024

The tractors have lifted their blockades of Paris and other major French cities, and the farmers have made their way home. Their two-week nationwide protest movement was suspended on Friday, 2 February, after Emmanuel Macron’s government announced a series of measures – financial and administrative – to alleviate the suffering, the anger and the despair

French politics is suffocating the Spirit of Christmas

December 24, 2023

Emmanuel Macron found himself in a spot of bother earlier in December when he invited France’s chief rabbi to the Elysee Palace to light the candles that marked the start of the Jewish festival of lights. Cue outrage in some quarters, mainly of the political sort, from men and women who accused the president of

Why does Europe ignore the crimes committed against Christianity?

November 23, 2023

Thirteen churches, basilicas and cathedrals across France were lit up in red on Wednesday, a colour chosen to symbolise the blood shed by Christians who died for their faith. The event went largely unnoticed by the media, as it did in Britain in July when Westminster Abbey also changed colour for the day. The

Pope Francis is well-intentioned but misguided when he talks about migrants

September 25, 2023

Last week president Emmanuel Macron hosted two prestigious figures to France and one proved more problematical than the other. King Charles’s State visit was a success, the perfect mix of pomp and ceremony and casual walkabouts. The British monarchy avoided controversy when he addressed the French senate, merely referring to the “existential challenge” of climate

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: The return of the school uniform in France

September 04, 2023

In 2017 Saint-Jean de Passy, a private school in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, introduced what it called a “practical, modern and sober” uniform for all its pupils. On its website, the school explains that it took the decision because “we are living in an age where the competition of appearance all too often take

The rampant anti-Catholicism of the French Left

August 30, 2023

On the morning of 8 June this year, Henri d’Anselme heard a commotion in an Annecy playground. The 24-year-old Frenchman then saw something horrific: a man with a knife stabbing babies and toddlers in front of their hysterical mothers. D’Anselme did what we all like to imagine we would have done in similar circumstances: he

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