the documentary on the missionary priests of the MEP

“Baroudeurs du Christ” sketches the portraits of five priests of (very) different ages and temperaments, while recalling the long history of the society of Foreign Missions of Paris (the MEP, founded in 1663) to which they belong. What are their plans?

What paths have led them to where they are, often on the outskirts, near people in precarious situations? Thus in Taiwan, Yves Moal, 82 years old, a great figure of mercy, welcomes disabled people, criminal offenders, victims of alcohol or drugs, in the recycling center he created.

Certainly, it takes audacity, even a good dose of unconsciousness, and a faith that moves mountains, to commit one’s life to a country that one has not chosen (it is the superiors who decide), of which one must begin by learning the language for years, and which will be the country of the priest’s mission for all his life, solitude and poverty included.

The camera of Damien Boyer, an evangelical Protestant already director of another documentary on priests, “Sacerdoce” (2023), films them among the poor with whom most of them stand: Yves Moal, but also Philippe Blot in Seoul (South Korea), Laurent Bissara in a suburb of Calcutta (India), Gabriel de Lépinau, in the isolated bush villages of northern Madagascar, and Will Conquer, in Thailand.

Reminders of the “sacred history” of the MEPs punctuate the reports: letters burning with fervor from missionaries of the past (23 died martyrs during the 20th century alone), exhortation to the founders, by Pope Alexander VII in 1659, so current: “Do not put forward any argument to convince these people to change their rites, their customs and their morals, unless they are obviously contrary to religion and morality. Do not introduce our countries among them, but faith, this faith which neither rejects nor harms the rites or customs of any people, but, on the contrary, wants them to be kept and protected… Hurry to get used to it.”

An epic soundtrack

The production displays a “hero” aesthetic and at times plays on seduction. The title, “baroudeur”, takes a word from barracks slang, which evokes a fight. The very evocation of the difficulties of the mission (loneliness, celibacy, poverty), brief, supports the figure of the fighter, magnified by an epic soundtrack.

The image of the venerable Foreign Missions of Paris has suffered in recent years from the indictment of two of its former superiors general in cases of abuse. It needs to be spruced up. This commissioned film with promotional accents, broadcast in theaters and in schools, can make young people dream. The MEPs also offer them numerous volunteer missions in Asia or the Indian Ocean, where they can discover the usual reality of the mission, often in ordinary parishes. Without staging.