Open letter to the President of the French Bishops' Conference concerning the altar service during Pope Leo's visit to France
Published on August 1, 2026 -
Our open letter to the President of the Conference of Bishops of France to ensure that young girls will be able to serve at the altar alongside boys during the masses celebrated by Léon in September
Our conviction is simple: there is no justification for excluding young girls from serving at the altar during Mass. While boys naturally participate in the celebration, girls are still, in many French parishes, directed towards separate roles, such as "servants of the assembly" or "servants of Mary".
This difference in treatment is theologically unfounded and is difficult to reconcile with the provisions of canon law.
That is why, as Pope Leo prepares to celebrate several masses in France during the month of September, Magdala has officially written to the president of the Conference of Bishops of France to ensure that on this occasion, girls and boys will be able to share the service of the altar, in a spirit of justice and without any form of discrimination.
Please find our open letter below.
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Brother,
With the approach of Pope Leo's visit to France and the masses to be said at Place de la Concorde on Saturday September 26 and at Metz Cathedral on Monday the 28th, we would like to ensure that young girls will serve at the altar alongside boys.
We would gladly have dispensed with this letter, which you may, and we hope, find superfluous, but a glance at our map prompted us to be cautious. Indeed, we learned that in our country, more than half of the parishes exclude girls from the vicinity of the altar, unlike the practices in Belgium, Germany, Spain, India… and even the Vatican.
Canon law is very clear, however: according to the instruction Redemptionis sacramentum, "girls and women may be admitted to the service of the altar, at the judgment of the diocesan Bishop ."
In 2024, Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, president of the International Association of Altar Servers, publicly confirmed that there was no reason to exclude girls from altar service, that they were fully in their place there.
The French tendency to make young girls into "servants of the assembly" or "servants of Mary" asked to wear a cape rather than an alb, would therefore be a conscious choice of our bishops.
This function, for which nothing in Church law establishes the necessity or even the existence, contributes to fostering a devaluing representation of girls and future women in their community.
While the boys serve in the sanctuary, the girls distribute the song sheets. It is not uncommon, at the offertory, to see them carry the offerings back up the nave to place them in the hands of their male counterparts as they ascend the steps leading to the altar.
This gesture is of rare symbolic violence.
Why such discrimination between children who are all equal by virtue of their baptism? On what grounds? For what reasons? We do not know. We deplore it.
Firstly, because distinguishing between altar server and assembly server seems to us to be nonsense: our young ministers (for the service of the altar is a "true liturgical ministry" in the sense of article 29 of the constitution on the liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium adopted at Vatican II) are precisely not only at the service of the altar but also of the liturgy of the Word and of the assembly " as a figure of the Church in prayer and body of Christ" .
Therefore, following Patrick Prétot, a monk and theologian teaching at the Higher Institute of Liturgy, we believe that this amounts to introducing " a surreptitious separation between the nave and the sanctuary, and even more so between the congregation and the various ministries ." However, "with St. Augustine, we must remember that the principle 'with you, I am a Christian, for you I am a bishop' implies that even ordained ministers are part of the congregation and are 'servants of the congregation . '"
We deplore it further because this trend profoundly contradicts the spirit of the synodal approach initiated by Pope Francis and continued by Leo, which calls for greater co-responsibility of all the baptized in the life of the Church, without distinction of gender.
Let us recall that in 2021, canon 230 of the Code of Canon Law was modified in order to institutionalize the opening of lay ministries to women as well as men, preferring to base the choice of future ministers on their "age and [their] qualities" rather than on anatomical criteria.
Baptismal equality is not a pious wish.
It is even the exact reason for the existence of the "Catholic Church" which takes its name from the Greek "universal assembly of believers" - we will never tire of remembering this.
The masses on September 26 and 28 therefore seem to us to be the perfect opportunity for the Church in France to send a strong signal.
Brother Jean-Marc, as President of the Conference of Bishops of France, you are the guarantor of unity with Rome and hold a truly vital role in national leadership. We therefore ask you to officially confirm that, during these services, girls will be part of the group of children serving at the altar, the Word, the Church, and Pope Leo.
After all, it is simply a matter of applying what Church law already allows.
Otherwise, the Church in France, which sometimes seems to regress rather than advance on social issues that are nevertheless settled by its own texts, will have to resign itself to seeing women and girls quietly drift away from it, without their departure being heard or considered.
Fraternally, sisterly,
The team from Magdala, a Catholic and feminist association
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To support our initiative, you can write to:
Jean-Marc Aveline
President of the Conference of Bishops of France
58, avenue de Breteuil – 75007 Paris
Celestino Migliore
Apostolic Nuncio to France
10, Avenue du Président Wilson – 75116 Paris
Benoit Bertrand
President of the organizing committee for the Pope's visit to France
Diocese of Pontoise – 16, chemin de la pelouse – 95300 Pontoise
Laurent Ulrich
Archbishop of Paris
10, rue du cloître Notre Dame – 75004 Paris
Philippe Ballot
Archbishop of Metz
Episcopal House – Bishopric of Metz – 15, place Sainte-Glossinde – BP 10690 – 57019 METZ Cedex 01