The priest is a married woman, the Anglican service is in English, yet the old stone chapel in Bordeaux is definitely 100 percent French Roman Catholic.In southwest France, once a battlefield between medieval English and French armies, expats are breathing life into borrowed Catholic churches left empty by their local flocks, quietly sprouting a dozen Anglican congregations.
As sunlight filtered through the stained glass windows of the 19th century chapel, Reverend Gill Stratchan unpacked the chalice she would use for the Sunday service while her husband sorted prayer books.
"I was ordained a priest in a magnificent abbey in the Dordogne in 2007," said Stratchan, a retired British schoolteacher resident in France since 1996.
Two Catholic priests and a bishop attended her ordination in their abbey. "It was a fairly unique situation for them to see a woman ordained," she said.
But the broad-mindedness on the part of the French was not entirely unexpected. "What brings us together is stronger than what divides us," said Father Lanuc, in charge of ecumenical relations for the Archbishop of Bordeaux.
"An English Anglican has the right to take Holy Communion in a French Roman Catholic church, which is not allowed anywhere else," added Reverend Paul Vrolijk, Chaplain of the regional Anglican Diocese and unofficial diplomat.
An important factor for this peaceful cohabitation is a long if tangled mutual history that includes the Hundred Years War in the Middle Ages, and a more recent ban on churches poaching each other's followers.
"We are not trying to steal their sheep," said Dutch-born Vrolijk. "Our mission is very clear -- it only includes English-speakers."
The resulting congregations are microcosms of the expat community, a mixed bag of Anglicans, mainline Protestant denominations, and a few English-speaking Catholics, all of which leads to occasional squabbles on questions of faith.
For the expats, the congregations play a small but vital role in providing a social life and a clearing-house of information for new arrivals. Quiz nights, charity events and cooking clubs foster new friendships.
Christmas carols and mulled wine fight off homesickness at the holidays.
The need for contact is real.
"In the countryside, people drive one and a half hours to attend a service," said Vrolijk. "Afterwards they stay for lunch".
Another key factor is that the expats live in a region with a glut of empty historical churches.
"In one area near here, the priest has 40 churches to look after," said Vrolijk. "Some are only used once or twice a year."
The chapel in Bordeaux, located on a school campus owned by the Sisters of Assumption, has been the seat of the Anglican Diocese for two decades.
When asked what motivated the Order to loan the chapel to the Anglicans, a diminutive nun in a purple habit paused and reflected: "It was wonderful to have the church filled with life again."
All but one of the congregations meet in a church no longer in use. The exception is Limeuil, and the irony will not be lost on history buffs.
Limeuil, a postcard-perfect village perched above where the Dordogne and Vezere rivers meet, was once a strategic stronghold during the bloody Hundred Years War, during which English and French royal families struggled for power.
The town, frequently ravaged, was alternately English or French, depending on the winner of the latest battle.
Today, they share a church: Roman Catholic services in French and Anglican services in English.
Nevertheless, Stratchan and the unusual circumstances of her ordination have provoked both irritation and curiosity amongst her French Catholic neighbours.
"We have to be sensitive about it," said Vrolijk. "In some cases, we can?t have a woman priest. We recognize that we are guests here."
But Benedictine nuns in the Pyrenees mountains recently invited her to speak about her experience as a female priest.
Her impression: it's "only a matter of time" before Catholics open the debate on this thorny issue.
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SIC: AFP