The Rural Rite and the Question of Continuity: Thiberville, Abbé Francis Michel, and the Legacy of Fr Montgomery Wright
In the quiet Norman countryside of the Diocese of Évreux, the parish cluster centred on Thiberville has once again become a point of ecclesial attention. Abbé Francis Michel, dismissed from the clerical state by decree of the Holy See in 2020, continues to celebrate the traditional Roman Rite for a congregation drawn from across the region.
The situation presents a paradox: liturgical continuity sustained in canonical rupture.
The Present Ministry
Recent reports from celebrations of Christmas and Candlemas describe the full ceremonial observance of the traditional Roman Rite: Latin chant, incense, multiple genuflections, solemn gestures, and the blessing of candles according to the older books. The liturgical theology expressed is unmistakably sacrificial and vertical — the priest facing the altar, the rite unfolding in sacred language, silence interwoven with chant.
The faithful who gather are not confined to the immediate village. Cars arrive from neighbouring departments; families travel significant distances. Their attraction is not merely aesthetic. It is theological. The older liturgy embodies what the Council of Trent described as the Mass as a true and proper sacrifice offered for the living and the dead¹, a reality reiterated by Mediator Dei in its defence of the sacrificial character of the Eucharistic liturgy².
This attachment is not new to Thiberville.
The Canonical Problem
Abbé Michel’s current ministry, however, stands outside canonical order. Having been convicted under French civil law for financial misconduct and subsequently dismissed from the clerical state, he no longer possesses a canonical mission.
Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law:
- Dismissal from the clerical state removes the rights and obligations proper to clerics (can. 292)³.
- A laicised priest may not licitly celebrate the sacraments.
- He lacks faculties to absolve sins (can. 966 §1)⁴.
- He cannot validly assist at marriages without delegation (can. 1108 §1)⁵.
While the sacramental character of Holy Orders remains indelible (cf. Council of Trent, Session XXIII)⁶, the lawful exercise of priestly ministry depends upon hierarchical communion. The diocesan bishop has publicly warned the faithful that Michel’s liturgical acts are illicit and, in certain instances, invalid.
The distinction between validity and liceity is not academic. The Church has always maintained that sacramental power is ordered to ecclesial unity. St Ignatius of Antioch wrote in the first century: “Let that be considered a valid Eucharist which is celebrated under the bishop or one whom he appoints”⁷.
Here lies the tension: ontological priesthood without canonical mandate.
The Legacy of Fr Quentin Montgomery-Wright
Yet the history of this Norman parish must be read in full.
Before Michel, the same grouped rural cure — comprising several small territorial parishes united under one pastor — was served for decades by Fr Quentin Montgomery-Wright an English priest who naturalised in France. Arriving in the 1950s, he remained for over thirty years as curé of this parish cluster in the Évreux countryside.
“When he was young and first crossed to France, this priest from Mevagissey (Cornwall) he was thought by the establishment here to be not Catholic enough. Now they think he is embarrassingly too Catholic – they’ve changed not he…”
Ray Gosling, Fr. Quintin’s Normandy
A BBC documentary Fr. Quintin’s Normandy made in the early 1990’s highlights not only the fortitude of this one faithful priest but his great joy and sense of humor as he drove 50,000 kilometers a year to bring the Mass and sacraments to the scattered flock.
Fr Montgomery-Wright became widely known for:
- Maintaining the Latin liturgy in its traditional form.
- Teaching catechism according to pre-conciliar manuals.
- Preserving devotional life centred unmistakably on the sacrificial Mass.
- Resisting the desacralising tendencies he perceived in certain post-conciliar reforms.
“Traditional priests as with all priests at the moment are in short supply…”
Fr Quentin Montgomery-Wright
Documentary footage from the late twentieth century (below) shows packed congregations, solemn ritual, altar boys in cassock and surplice, and Gregorian chant filling rural stone churches. His parish became a recognised stronghold of traditional Catholic worship within diocesan structures.
The continuity is evident.
Abbé Michel did not introduce the traditional Roman Rite to Thiberville. He inherited a liturgical culture already shaped by Fr Montgomery-Wright’s long incumbency. The attachment of the faithful to the older rite is part of the parish’s lived memory.
What differs is not the rite itself but the canonical posture under which it is celebrated.
A Microcosm of a Wider Crisis
Thiberville therefore becomes emblematic of a broader ecclesial drama.
In many regions of France, attachment to the traditional liturgy has depended upon individual priests willing to preserve it. When exercised within hierarchical communion — however strained — such ministry remains securely within the Church’s juridical order. When rupture occurs, the sacramental life of a community enters ambiguity.
Two truths stand side by side:
- The traditional Roman Rite in Thiberville represents a genuine continuity with the ministry of Fr Montgomery-Wright.
- The present exercise of priestly ministry by Abbé Michel occurs without canonical mandate and under explicit episcopal prohibition.
The Church has always insisted that tradition is not merely the preservation of forms but fidelity within communion. As Lumen Gentium teaches, the bishops, in union with the Roman Pontiff, are the visible principle and foundation of unity in their dioceses⁸. The safeguarding of tradition cannot ultimately be severed from ecclesial order.
And yet, the persistence of the older rite in rural Normandy testifies to something equally enduring: the instinct of the faithful to seek worship that expresses clearly the sacrificial mystery at the heart of Catholic life.
The Norman countryside, quiet and windswept, thus continues to pose an uncomfortable question to modern Catholicism: can the ancient liturgy and canonical obedience be reconciled without fracture — or will parishes like Thiberville remain suspended between continuity and conflict?
- Council of Trent, Session XXII, Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass (1562).
- Pius XII, Mediator Dei (1947), §§68–70.
- Code of Canon Law (1983), can. 292.
- Code of Canon Law (1983), can. 966 §1.
- Code of Canon Law (1983), can. 1108 §1.
- Council of Trent, Session XXIII, Doctrine on the Sacrament of Order (1563).
- St Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans, 8.
- Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, §23.
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