Edmond Fricoteaux's providential discovery of the statue of Our Lady of France

Summary:

In April 1984, Edmond Fricoteaux travelled to Rome for the first time in his life with his wife Françoise. Together with some Ursuline nuns from Paris, Françoise was accompanying a group of young girls, all in the ninth grade, who, at the invitation of Pope John Paul II, were attending a jubilee in the Eternal City that would bring together tens of thousands of young people from all over the world for a week until Palm Sunday.

Strictly speaking, Edmond was not close to God. Before leaving, he asked his wife if there would be a lot of "religious stuff" going on in this Italian getaway. On the first day, he paid no attention to the morning's "spiritual" talks, killing time during the homily by observing every architectural detail of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore. In the afternoon, he happily took part in a tour of ancient Rome.

The next morning, once again "cloistered" with the young people in Santa Maria Maggiore, he watched unenthusiastically as a tall black cardinal took the microphone and gave a long lecture to the young people, seated on the floor and packed into the beautiful basilica. Once again, he paid no attention to the long homily and continued to wander around, discovering the beauties of the basilica.

Cardinal Gantin - for it was he - had probably been speaking for an hour when Edmond was suddenly caught by a word or phrase (he could not remember exactly what). Now attentive, he began to listen to the man of God and, for ten minutes, gave him his undivided attention. It was then that he noticed a little girl making the sign of the cross on her chest and coming out of a nearby confessional, while two children of about twelve got up to go to confession as well.

Without understanding what was driving him or what was happening to him, Edmond, who had remained standing, stepped over the girls and boys seated in front of him, pushed the two kids aside as if playing rugby and took the penitent's place. He hadn't thought about it. He was certainly not there to make a confession - it had been too long and he had forgotten how it was done. No, it's just that the cardinal's words had suddenly awoken him from a deep and long spiritual sleep.

After a very deep conversation with the priest, Edmond confessed his sins. Things were about to change for him. The homilies he had dreaded captivated him, and during the afternoon visits to Rome, he reflected at length on the morning's teachings. He returned to Paris on Palm Monday "completely thirsty for God". A very Cartesian man, he wanted to be sure that God existed, and he would only consider changing his life, based on material success, if he could know the answer for sure.

During this early period of his conversion he would sometimes make his lighter flicker for a brief moment and declare to his friends and acquaintances: "This spark is the time of our life, and I have been very long, compared to eternity... if eternity exists".

His thirst for certainty was so great that he telephoned his mother, who was already 92: "Mum, do you remember... when I was little... you used to read me beautiful stories about the saints or apparitions of the Blessed Virgin? Do you still have them? - Of course, those books are in a box in the attic."

He went and got twelve of them on the first visit. He devoured them. He went back for another fifteen or so. Of these, two books in particular would overcome his last hesitations: Father Lamy, priest and mystic, published by the Servants of Jesus and Marie; and The Secret of Mary, by Saint Louis de Montfort (1943 edition), which he found "impossible to digest and incomprehensible".

Father Lamy's life appealed to him in two ways. Firstly, the story, full of freshness and holiness, of a good priest who died in 1931, nicknamed "the Curé d'Ars of the red suburbs", who lived for a long time in La Courneuve, where he is buried in the little cemetery of Saint-Lucien church. This priest often had verbal and visual exchanges with his guardian angel, the Archangel Gabriel, the Blessed Virgin and even Jesus.

Then there was the fact that Fricoteaux lived in Saint-Denis, on the outskirts of La Courneuve, where he met the Communist senator-mayor at the town hall several times a month to sign contracts and notarized documents. At the end of the first meeting that followed, he stopped off at Saint-Lucien church and entered the cemetery, determined to find Father Lamy's grave. He did find the tomb in the middle of the cemetery. A bronze bust of the old priest topped the headstone. Edmond prayed with great fervour: "Father Lamy, Christ once said to the saints accompanying him, speaking of you: 'This is my Mother's protégé! " I'm not asking you for this distinction, which I don't deserve, but I am asking you, since she loves you, to instil in my heart an immoderate love for the Blessed Virgin Mary!" And from then on, every time he had to sign important documents, Edmond would go and pray at Father Lamy's tomb to ask for an undying love for Mary...

His prayer was answered in a sudden and extraordinary way. His heart was flooded with love for the Immaculate Conception, as a face would be by a rainstorm. That evening, he read The Secret of Mary in one go for several hours, punctuating his reading with tears of joy and exclamations: "How beautiful it is, my God, how beautiful!" From then on, he gave himself wholly to his Queen: "with, in, through and for Mary" as de Montfort has said. He entered with all his spiritual strength into the secret of Mary, and from then on he never left her side.

Fricoteaux visits to Father Lamy's tomb became more frequent. Having thanked the good priest for the grace he had received, he opened up to him with an ardent desire conceived in his soul: to make a gift to the Blessed Virgin. But what could it be? He waited for the priest to answer this new prayer. It seemed to him that God had a plan: to build a monumental statue to the glory of his Mother by a major road. But was this really God's plan? Edmond feared that this was just a figment of his imagination. In his prayers, he asked Father Lamy for discernment:  if this was indeed God's wish, it must be "drummed" into his brain and there must be no room for hesitation. The response was almost immediate, and the project invaded his mind day and night.

On his return from a pilgrimage, providence placed him on the plane next to Father René Laurentin, the great French scholar and historian of Marian apparitions, who encouraged him and said: "You need the agreement of the bishop of the diocese you choose, the support of a religious congregation and - most importantly - the Virgin will have to present the Child." He chose the bishop of Pontoise. The congregation would be that of the Servants of Jesus and Mary, from the Abbey of Ourscamps, in the Oise region, created by Father Lamy.

Next he needed to commission a statue. Edmond had a very definite preference. It would be the one at the rue du Bac church, where he often went to pray: the Virgin with Rays on the high altar, which he found so beautiful, with her crown of twelve stars. He called Father Laurentin. The bishop agreed, as did the congregation.

And the statue? "I don't have it yet, but I'm thinking of having it made by an Italian sculptor. It'll be cheaper! But don't forget: it has to have the Child!" Edmond was not happy: he thought that the Child Jesus would hide several stars in Mary's crown... and he was very keen on making Mary's crown visible!

Father Laurentin, an expert on the Blessed Virgin Mary, had no immediate answer to give him. Does Mary wear or not wear the crown of stars when she carries the Child? "He's a specialist about the twelve stars. He'll tell you..."

" Father Laurentin has just told me that you are the specialist in the twelve stars and...
- What's all this about? I don't know anything about the twelve stars. I'm a scientific researcher on the Shroud of Turin!
- Father Laurentin was mistaken. I'm sorry, goodbye, sir.
- No, please wait. I want to know why you called me.
- It's a long story...
- Go for it!"

And Fricoteaux began explaining his project, conversion, etc.
The statue exists,"  Antoine Legrand replied.
- It's all right, I intend to have it made by Italian sculptors.
- I'm telling you it exists!
- I don't understand.
- It's called the statue of Our Lady of France.

Antoine Legrand then told Fricoteaux the story of the statue that crowned the pontifical pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1937 - curiously placed between the Russian pavilion, with an enormous sickle and hammer emblem, and the German pavilion with a gigantic swastika (two nations that contributed greatly to Mary's sorrows).

"It's a lovely story, Mr Legrand, but I'm afraid your statue doesn't have the characteristics that I need.
- What are they?
- It has to be very big.
- How tall do you need it to be?
- Seven metres.
- That's exactly how tall it is!
- That's great, but you see, there's something else that's very important.
- And that is?
- She must have the Child.
- She has the Child I And not only does she have him, she holds him high in her arms. And he also has his arms open to the world and is holding an olive branch in his right hand. It's Our Lady of France, Queen of Peace!
- Where is she?
- That, I don't know

For several months, Edmond Fricoteaux and Antoine Legrand worked together to find the statue of Our Lady of France. What had happened? On November 2, 1938, the newspaper La Croix published an article: "Yesterday,  in the pontifical pavilion, now the Marian pavilion, took place the closing ceremony of the year that  held the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the vow of Louis XIII, who gave France to Mary. Cardinal Verdier, who presided over the ceremony, told the large audience, including journalists, that his wish was that the luminous statue - "Our Lady of France" - which so magnificently crowned the papal pavilion that had become the Marian pavilion, and which is now being demolished, should not disappear, but that it should be erected on a hill near Paris.... as an echo to the Sacré-Coeur of Montmartre."

The cardinal immediately chose Mount Valerian as the site for this project, and launched a fund-raising campaign. However, in 1939, war broke out and the project came to a halt. In 1940, the cardinal died, and in 1945, when the Liberation of France came, no one thought any more about the wish of His Excellency Cardinal Verdier, Archbishop of Paris!

Antoine Legrand and Edmond Fricoteaux searched hard and eventually found the statue... in Amiens, in a school basement!

Once again, what had happened? Tournon was the architect of the pontifical pavilion. His work, as we have just seen, had been demolished like most of the pavilions at the 1937 Universal Exhibition, but he had kept the plans in the hope of rebuilding it one day. The mayor of Amiens wanted to dedicate a square in his town to the physicist Édouard Branly, who had been born there, so he sent for his family to attend the ceremony. Tournon, who was Branly's son-in-law, was present with his daughter.

During the meal that followed, Tournon thanked the mayor for the honour bestowed on his father-in-law and told him that he would like to see a church built on the square. A few years later, the church of Saint-Honoré was erected on the Place Branly, a barely truncated copy of the papal pavilion at the 1937 Exhibition. Tournon brought back the statue of Our Lady of France, which had remained hidden during the war in a shed on the hill of Saint-Cloud, and placed it on the bell tower of the church of Saint-Honoré.

In 1982, under the weight of the statue, major cracks appeared in the structure, leading the mayor of Amiens to have it removed in April 1984, and prompting this headline in Le Courrier Picard newspaper: "In Amiens, the Virgin Mary descends from heaven". Because of its size, the statue was first placed in the giraffe pavilion at Amiens zoo, then dismantled (it is made of riveted copper plates, like the Statue of Liberty in New York) and stored in the basement of a local school.

After a series of problems, all solved by Providence, and two thousand hours of repairs by a master locksmith, the statue of Our Lady of France, Queen of Peace, was installed in the "Plaine of France", in the heart of the country that the Blessed Virgin loves so much, at Baillet-en-France, the first village since Paris to be given the name "en France", and is situated by the Route Nationale 1.

The "Our Lady of France" site is located eighteen kilometres from Paris, between Saint-Denis and Beauvais, in the Plaine de France region. It's easy to get to by road (sign posts), by train (from Gare du Nord station, with a stop at Bouffémont) and even by plane (Roissy and Le Bourget airports are relatively close by).

The ceremony on October 15, 1988, presided over by His Excellency Cardinal Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, assisted by seven bishops, including Mgr Rousset, bishop of Pontoise, and the apostolic nuncio, and in the presence of 52,000 faithful from all over France, was magnificent and we know from the thousands of letters of testimony received that many people converted and returned to God. Some 25,000 people supported the project, which cost over five million francs, almost fifty years to the day after Cardinal Verdier's vow.

Edmond was truly an apostle of Mary. After his conversion, no one ever left his office without hearing about the Immaculate Conception!

Beyond reasons to believe:

The Secret of Mary, by Saint Louis de Montfort, which the saint says he received "from the Most High", deserves to be known and put in practice.

Going further:

• On the Our History with Mary website, the article " Edmond Fricoteaux and the 'Pilgrim Virgins' prayer movement ".

More information:

• On the Zenit website, the article "The founder of the Pilgrim Virgins movement has died"
• On the France catholique website, the article "Edmond Fricoteaux, l'homme des Vierges pèlerines"
• Website of the Confraternity of Notre-Dame de France: "The founder of Notre-Dame de France"
• The article by Father René Laurentin: "Edmond Fricoteaux, a major mourning"