The city, on Thursday, hosted its maiden celebration of St. Joan of Arc Feast Day in homage to France’s patroness-saint Jean d’Arc, with a military tribute, litanies, and song service under the auspices of the Notre Dame des Anges (Our Lady of Angels) Church on Rue Dumas.
While the city’s Catholic tradition features ‘Feast Day’ events for several popular saints coinciding with their death anniversary, or entry into heaven as believed by the faithful, the Our Lady of Angels, as the only place of worship following French praxis, had recently decided to organise its first feast day of the French icon.
“The Feast Day celebration of the patroness-saint’s memory will be an annual event in our liturgical calendar”, said Fr. John Kennedy, parish priest at the Church of Our Lady of Our Angels.
The Feast Day commemorates the anniversary of the day in 1431 when Joan of Arc who led the French army in the battle at Orléans in 1429 to liberate her people from the English.
Joan of Arc was later captured by the Duke of Burgundy’s men, confined, put on a sham trial on charges of heresy and witchcraft, and eventually burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. It was not until 1450, that the guilty verdict was overturned by a Rehabilitation Trial ordered by Charles VII. In 1909, she was beatified in the famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris by Pope Pius X, and in 1920, she was canonised by Pope Benedict XV.
Joan of Arc garden
The remembrance ceremonies for an iconic figure, revered for valour, supreme sacrifice and spirituality, were arranged at the renovated Le jardin de Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc garden), which has as its centre-piece a marble sculpture of the celebrated icon.
As the only parish in India where masses are rendered in French, English and Tamil, the proceedings were conducted in all three languages.
Fr. Kennedy gave a brief overview of the history of the church and the garden which were donated to the parish by French industrialist-politician Francois Gaudart shortly around 1919.
Kaps Kovil
According to church records, the parish, founded in 1738 and among the oldest parishes in the city, has been known in local parlance as the “Kaps Kovil” (The Capuchins’ Church). The first French cleric to settle down in erstwhile Pondicherry, as early as in 1674, belonged to the Capuchin order.
The church has been deeply connected, historically and politically, with the period of French administration. Since a church first came up in 1707—the year following the death of François Martin, the first French Governor-General who developed the port city of erstwhile Pondicherry—the edifice was rebuilt under the rule of subsequent Governor-Generals Pierre Benoît Dumas and Joseph-François Dupleix.
The property was razed to the ground in the English conquest in 1761, and reconstructed in the 1765-70 period. It was not until 1828 that the Capuchins gave way to the Holy Spirit Fathers, who built the existing church (from 1851 to 1855). While priests from the Paris Foreign Missions Society began replacing the Holy Spirit Fathers from 1887, the parish has, since 2008, been served by a succession of French-speaking Tamil priests.
The garden and Joan of Arc statue were restored by the Friends of Pondicherry Heritage (FPH), with support from Paris-centred Foundation Vieilles Maisons Françaises (VMF) and other city agencies, including INTACH. The renovated premises was opened in 2020.
Charles H. De Brantes, FPH founder-president, said that the garden was restored to offer visitors a spiritual experience. The design reflects a melting pot of influences that range from the Persian “char-bagh” (four quadrants) concept to pergola columns with overhanging vines curated by Italian landscape architect Mariachiara Pozzana.
