In his “campsite”, a priest goes to meet isolated populations

Who said that a caravan could not become a missionary? Father Gilles Rousselet, he made it an evangelization tool. In his vast parish of Saint-Jean-en-Limousin (Creuse), which brings together 27 bell towers and some 8,500 inhabitants, this Eudist priest (member of the Congregation of Jesus and Mary) accompanied by faithful volunteers, leaves every week “to announce the joy of the Gospel”-and much more.

A parish that takes the road

Every Friday, aboard his “campsite”, Father Gilles crosses one of the municipalities of his parish. After a prayer and a blessing Urbi and Orbithe team goes on a mission, to fit into the social fabric, specifies the priest. Then begins an afternoon of meetings, sometimes explosive. “We are going to ring anywhere”, with the help of the Holy Spirit to “go where Jesus wants to go,” he explains. Even if some refuse any dialogue, the priest and his acolytes are not discouraged. They have time and listen to the other, often alone, isolated, precarious or disabled. To enter “in the story of their lives,” he breathes. A way also to show a suspicious population, a church that welcomes people as they are, without judgment. “We are no longer in a Christian culture. We can no longer just wait until people come to church, to mass, tells this church man because they do not come. So you have to meet them. “

“Go to the outskirts”

Son of a soldier, without fixed geographic ties, Father Gilles had a thousand lives: educator with drug addicts, missionary in Africa, priest in Paris then elsewhere in France. At 60, an inner call resonates: that of Pope Francis, inviting “to go to the outskirts”, to join the margins. The Creuse becomes her point of fall. A caravan, offered by former parishioners of Orleans (Loiret), its pastoral tool. It allows him to “bring Christ to the inhabitants” where the church is no longer going.

“The first thing that the campsite has changed is me,” he says. “At first, I was afraid of going to people I didn’t know.” A dozen volunteers follow him now every week. And the initiative is emulated. During the third edition of The night for the missionin June 2023, Father Rousselet collected nearly 40,000 euros, which allowed him, among other things, to acquire a new caravan. Since then, he continues to crush the Creuse roads, sowing the gospel on the edge of the paths.