In the summer of 1968, revolution was on the breeze and miniskirts swayed above fashionistas’ knees.
Celibacy was not the word on most twentysomethings’ lips, but for the young Nicholas France, the febrile atmosphere of the late Sixties was the ideal proving ground for testing his commitment to Catholicism.
‘I was ordained in 1968, the “year of revolution”,’ says Monsignor France, who has been head of the Catholic Church in Jersey for the past 19 years and celebrated the 50th anniversary of his ordination with a special mass at St Thomas’ Church last week.
‘Everything was up in the air. In Paris the students erupted, America was losing the war in Vietnam during the terrible Tet Offensive, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in April, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated a few days before I was ordained, there was the great Prague Spring before Russian tanks moved in on them. The Sixties was an extraordinary and disturbing time.
‘It was also,’ he recalls with a whisper, ‘the year of the miniskirt – that was very distracting for a young priest. But at the end of it all, I was very happy with the life I had chosen. I am pretty sure I had a calling from God to be a priest.’
The year 1968 was also synonymous with the Rolling Stones’ song Sympathy for the Devil, but Mgr France preferred to listen to the chime of church bells. However, he will admit that committing to a life of celibacy has been one of the hardest challenges he has faced as an ordained clergyman.
‘When you’re a normal, healthy lad of 25, the vocation of celibacy and the vocation of priesthood are interwoven. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that sometimes one is easier than the other.
‘But for me it’s always been [the case that] I wanted to imitate Jesus Christ and that has meant remaining celibate.
‘No matter how difficult that is at different stages of your life – because inevitably you get close to people – you have to say, for the sake of the rest, I won’t be exclusive to one. Marriage is very exclusive and as a priest I need to be inclusive of everyone I seek to serve.’
The 75-year-old has served the Catholic Church in Jersey with distinction since his arrival in the Island in 1999, even though he admits living here was not part of his plan.
‘Obedience to my bishop, promised on the day of my ordination, was best tested whenever he or his successors asked me to move to a new work or parish,’ explains Mgr France, whose ecclesiastical career has seen him work throughout the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth – including in Windsor and Southampton.
‘In 1999 I was preparing for the Millennium in Southampton when all of a sudden the bishop asked me to come to Jersey. I was horrified at first – Jersey is part of the Diocese of Portsmouth, but it was the last place I wanted to go.
‘It was a huge job and I was the first to put the English and the French Catholic parishes together – St Thomas’ with its French tradition, and St Mary and St Peter’s with its Irish-English traditions.’
He remembers being struck by the ‘large amount of Portuguese in the Island’, and how his job was made harder when the only Portuguese-speaking priest in Jersey ‘pushed off after two weeks to go to Australia’.
‘That left me with the responsibility of looking after the Portuguese community. So here was I, not a linguist, learning to celebrate mass in Portuguese.’
Many different immigrant populations have come to Jersey over the years and Mgr France launched Caritas Jersey – an international branch of the Catholic charity – in 2013 to help cater for their needs.
‘The Portuguese, Polish and Romanian consuls are all supporting it.’
Mgr France, who in 2014 was made an MBE for his services to the Catholic and faith communities and to ethnic groups in Jersey, feels that although the Portuguese and Polish communities have made an overwhelming contribution to Island life, they are not treated equally in terms of the private rental housing sector.
‘It’s a big issue which I hope [newly appointed Housing Minister] Senator Sam Mézec is going to tackle head on – he’s certainly got my vote. He sees the real issues and housing is one of them. I’ve never been able to get anybody in the private sector to agree that they should have rent control – they shouldn’t just be able to charge what they want. In England you first have to make sure it is a fair rent.
‘And my other big concern [for these communities] has always been that they don’t get the vote really – apart from Carina Alves [a Portuguese woman elected to a Deputy No 2 seat in St Helier at the election].’
One of the most difficult moments of his ministry came in 2011, when he had to console the Polish community after Damian Rzeszowski stabbed to death his wife Izabela, their children Kinga and Kacper, his father-in-law Marek Garstka, and Marta and Julia de la Haye.
‘There was the landslide in Madeira that wiped away a lot of houses, then we had this terrible tragedy in Jersey one Sunday. The next morning I was called onto the radio station to be interviewed about that man’s crime.
‘We couldn’t understand it. It was a terrible thing because this man didn’t just go mad with a gun – which might have been slightly more impersonal – but he actually stabbed them.
‘So many different media outlets wanted interviews. I remember Sky News couldn’t get across because there were no boats or flights available, so they hired a yacht.
‘The Polish community were very shocked and I put on a special mass a few days later. It was a disturbing time.’
In the past, he has also suffered the loss of a close friend who was murdered.
‘The chap who murdered my friend phoned me up to tell me about it. Later I went to the Old Bailey trial and there he was.
‘Nothing about human nature surprises me. As a priest you deal with [cases of] incest, you deal with this, you deal with that.
‘We become a bit hardened as priests – we have to go from funerals to death beds to children’s schools, to having our lunch.’
Mgr France is viewed by many in Jersey as a traditionalist. He supported the Conscience Clause which the new Chief Minister, John Le Fondré, proposed earlier this year – but which was rejected by the States. Had the proposal been accepted, it would have protected the rights of people with religious beliefs to refuse business if it related to celebration or consecration of same-sex marriage.
Many critics say the Catholic Church is out of step with modern society given its stance against gay marriage and abortion – which Ireland recently voted to legalise. However, Mgr France remains unequivocal.
‘Equal rights for the baby have been forgotten. The issue is not that all those people [in Ireland] who voted yes agree with abortion – they don’t – but what they didn’t like is tying the hands of women who did, in conscience, feel they should go and have an abortion.
‘In that sense they were not pro-choice or pro-life, but pro-it’s up to you to choose. This is so much the culture of our times that it is difficult to argue against it. But terminating the life of your baby is a tragic thing to do.’
Where though, does this leave the Catholic Church?
‘It leaves us asking people to think again – to think more profoundly about who you are already. All those big moral issues are tricky because [of the emotions] but the principle has to stand, the absolute truth has to stay.’
It is one thing to be seen as out of step, quite another to be viewed as a sinful institution – yet cases of child sexual abuse by some Catholic priests and nuns during the 20th and 21st centuries have led critics of the Church to claim it is beyond redemption. What does he say to that?
‘Everyone is in need of redemption. The church is made up of sinners, not an elite. The church is made up of priests and religious sisters. [Some of them] did terrible things, sometimes it was covered up – all institutions at that time covered it up. But the Catholic Church very quickly developed our safeguarding methods which are finer than anybody else’s.’
Has he ever encountered such cases in Jersey?
‘No, but I’m sure things have happened in the past.’
Born in Worthing, Sussex, Mgr France attended Worth Benedictine School, where he says ‘monks beat us and taught us’.
‘It was absolutely unnecessary and I would never, ever defend [corporal punishment]. They normally used a wooden cane to beat us and once they broke branches off a tree because, as little boys, we had been talking in the rugby scrum.
‘But I preferred being beaten to writing out a 5,000-word essay on the inside of an egg cup – I remember my first one was having to write an essay on ties.’
Despite those trials and tribulations, he maintained his childhood tethers to the church.
‘The monks inspired me in many other ways, although I decided I didn’t want to become a monk – I wanted to become a priest in a parish.’
He says his upbringing was not especially religious because although his mother was, in his words, ‘an observant Catholic’, his father was ‘an agnostic Anglican’.
I tell him that I consider myself to be an agnostic Anglican, to which he responds: ‘We all are – I’m half agnostic because of my father. It’s good to question, to think, to be humble.’
For a man of the cloth to admit he is half agnostic would seem a startling admission.
Does he feel it is healthy to question in order to reaffirm one’s belief?
He sinks back into his armchair, pauses to consider, then poses his own question: ‘What’s the opposite of faith? Certainty – and faith is not certainty. Faith is uncertain – you don’t know.’
How, then, would he describe his level of faith? ‘I like the word trust. Like a child in the dark, you hold onto the hand of your father, so I hold onto the Lord in the darkness of our life. So much of the world in which we live is good, but it is Godless in other ways and that naturally can undermine your own faith.
‘It’s harder to live by the nakedness of faith, but sometimes you have to because what’s the alternative? The alternative is pretty grim.’
Although his faith has at times been tested, his commitment to Catholicism remains absolute and in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his ordination, Mgr France took mass with the Pope at the Vatican last week.
‘I celebrated mass with the Holy Father in his own private chapel. He loped in, hobbling a bit because of his knees, and we celebrated mass with him – no fuss, no flunkies around. Afterwards we took off our vestments and then we were presented to him one by one.
‘Nearly everybody there was Italian except me, but the Pope looked into my eyes and said, “Please pray for me”. Knowing the burdens of office – all he has seen, the great gatherings, the travel – here he was, one to one, priest to priest, saying “please pray for me”.’
Having turned 75 earlier this year, Mgr France will take leave of his post in
September and retire to Southampton, where the Church will give him a flat to reside in.
‘On 11 September I’ll be packing my bags – you have to listen to your body and my body is tired.’
His legacy will be one of good works, which include setting up the Caritas branch, and launching the Welcome Centre at St Thomas’ Church in partnership with Highlands College in 2004. The centre provides free English classes for newcomers to Jersey and thousands of Polish and Portuguese people have benefited.
‘If Jersey was the very last place I wanted to come, I can assure you that my 19 years here have been some of the most happy and fulfilling of my life.’
