Foreign Legion Chaplain Father Pommerol

[tomahawk6]

Foreign Legion Chaplain Pommerol is with 2REP. During his 10 years of service with the Legion he has served 8 years deployed. Watching the video I can see why the Legionaires adore their Padre. If you click on the second link you can read the original article in French or read my poor translation. ;D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiJX76YPsb8&feature

http://www.lefigaro.fr/interna...-appellent-padre.php

He is chaplain, he runs and jumps in parachute with the green berets of the 2nd REFERENCE MARK. What quickly made of him a figure as popular as respected in this regiment d' elite which still has just lost a man last week. Refusing the half-measures and the compromises, the father of Pommerol has all the priest of combat. In d' other times, the father Benoît Julien de Pommerol would have made a perfect martyr, in the kind of Thomas Beckett or to sir Thomas More, admirable as much qu' unbearable d' intransigence, running up unceasingly against a too prompt world with compromisings. It could also have been a monk soldier, Templier dedicated to the defense of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, or have endorsed l' armour d' a prelate fighter of the Middle Ages, sure of its faith and its sword. Or even to become an ascetic, emulates of the Father of Foucauld, éperdu of prayer at the bottom d' a desert. Born at the XXe century, the father of Pommerol became military chaplain. This young priest enthusiast d' absolute is the “Padre”, as one calls the chaplains in l' familiarly; army, of the 2nd foreign regiment parachutists, on mission since the beginning of l' year in Afghanistan. Large and thin, a long face of saint of Greco, Padre says the mass every morning, its paddle threaded over its camouflage dress and its boots of jump. Its small vault is arranged in basement in an old Soviet bunker. It is at the top of the French base of Tora, in the district of Sarobi, with l' is of Kabul, perched on a rocky outcrop lost in the middle of the Afghan mountains.

Its first colonel said to him: “Go with the paras, and jump!” Padre took this advice, it has aujourd' today more than 1.000 jumps to its credit. (Sebastien Dufour) He is chaplain, he runs and jumps in parachute with the green berets of the 2nd REFERENCE MARK. What quickly made of him a figure as popular as respected in this regiment d' elite which still has just lost a man last week. Refusing the half-measures and the compromises, the father of Pommerol has all the priest of combat. In d' other times, the father Benoît Julien de Pommerol would have made a perfect martyr, in the kind of Thomas Beckett or to sir Thomas More, admirable as much qu' unbearable d' intransigence, running up unceasingly against a too prompt world with compromisings. It could also have been a monk soldier, Templier dedicated to the defense of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, or have endorsed l' armour d' a prelate fighter of the Middle Ages, sure of its faith and its sword. Or even to become an ascetic, emulates of the Father of Foucauld, éperdu of prayer at the bottom d' a desert. Born at the XXe century, the father of Pommerol became military chaplain. This young priest enthusiast d' absolute is the “Padre”, as one calls the chaplains in l' familiarly; army, of the 2nd foreign regiment parachutists, on mission since the beginning of l' year in Afghanistan. Large and thin, a long face of saint of Greco, Padre says the mass every morning, its paddle threaded over its camouflage dress and its boots of jump. Its small vault is arranged in basement in an old Soviet bunker. It is at the top of the French base of Tora, in the district of Sarobi, with l' is of Kabul, perched on a rocky outcrop lost in the middle of the Afghan mountains. The father of Pommerol made build a small bell-tower, repaint the ceiling in blue, and dedicated l' building with Our-Lady-of-Victories. Sisters of l' Parisian church of the same name offered to him a statue of Michel saint, owner of the parachutists, qu' it placed on l' furnace bridge. “C' is obviously my patron saint”, known as the father, who distributes around him small medals of l' archangel, that the legionaries hang to l' interior of their green beret His aspergillum was manufactured by l' one of the mechanics of the regiment. “One s' in when I will remember will be up there, hein, Padre? ”, the mechanic said to him by giving him the solid object made of welded pieces of metal. The father of Pommerol is a popular figure with the regiment. He runs the morning with the legionaries, embarks in the armoured tanks which leave in patrol, or goes in the isolated stations, in the valley of Tagab or d' Uzbine, with the deployed companies. In Tora, one l' stop in the dusty alleys of the camp, between the armoured tanks parked in front of the buildings of the companies, like that, sometimes without reason, just to discuss. “The legionaries belong to a generation which does not know or little the religion. But they do not reject it, explains Padre. They often dropped God, but not by refusal, more by d' lack; occasion. They n' will not see a priest, but if a priest comes to them, they n' will not hesitate “to hang up again the coaches”. C' is pastoral handshake, says it. One day, l' a d' them m' said: “Padre, I cannot come to the mass, I did not confess myself since Kosovo.” This n' is not an unworthy attitude. C' is rather a mark of respect…, tells the father of Pommerol. I speak to them with simplicity. What does not want to say simply, he adds. My parish, c' is the regiment. I live in the middle of my parishioners. But ministerial priesthood is not enough to be made respect auprès d' they, specifies Padre. The legionaries are people who very left to be used for the Legion. They look at those which n' did not make the same choice with reserve. Their respect is deserved. It is necessary to go with them, to go on the ground with them, to jump with them.”

The father of Pommerol learned this lesson in l' one of its first assignments, with l' School of the airborne troops of Pau. “Has my arrival, j' asked my chief of police, colonel Rideau, which I was to make. It m' answered that j' had freehand. I asked him who was going to evaluate my work. “But c' is God, Padre! ”, m' he answered. While adding simply like d' consigns; to go to see the paras. “And the paras, it continued, they are on the aircraft: then, go with them, and jump!” J' there went, continues the father of Pommerol, and j' jumped.” The father, since, followed to the letter these first instructions. He became a highly skilled parachutist, with more d' a thousand of jumps to its credit, of which several hundreds in ordered opening. He practises sometimes even the freefall out of cassock. “This n' is not ideal to stabilize itself during the fall”, recognizes it while laughing. And especially, it n' recognized d' forever; another hierarchy that of God. Leave with s' to attract some vexations with that regularly, terrestrial, of l' military authority. As soon as l' opportunity arises to denounce a compromise, to raise a delicate question, the father of Pommerol sinks. In an environment as delicate as l' Afghanistan, its exits aggravate sometimes the command. When l' army considers one moment to make wear a veil to the female personnel deployed in Afghanistan, the father of Pommerol goes up to the crenel and denounces l' idea with virulence. Its discussions with l' Moslem chaplain are also sometimes surging. The father of Pommerol quotes in his sermons l' archbishop of Smyrna, Mgr Bernardini, prelate known to warn against the rise of l' influence l' Islam in Europe. “The combat against the talibans is a combat of civilization against cruelty, known as Padre. What does not want to say qu' they should be scorned. The faith, and God seeks to like them has. As the marshal of Lattre in Indo-China in connection with the Vietnamese soldier-minh said, they are people who fight well for a bad cause.”

The father of Pommerol is conscious of l' embarrassment what causes sometimes its exits. L' military chaplaincy s' worry sometimes about this young priest ignited, able to say their four truths to generals, and even with the Minister for Defense in visit. “I am perhaps a little cumbersome. I am a little excessive, c' is true. My dear mother for a long time repeats me to put l' water in my wine, recognizes Padre.Mais I do not want to be moderate. Qu' c' is qu' a moderated chaplain, d' elsewhere? J' undoubtedly have sliced opinions, but at least I am coherent. The passion of Jesus-Christ, this n' is not a picnic!” A thing is sure, the father of Pommerol is a priest of combat. “L' Church dies of the silence of the prelates, said already holy Catherine of His. If I keep silent myself, I hang up again the gloves”, repeats it. Its enemies are cowardice, the weakness, the compromise. Nothing l' irritate more than the tendency of certain priests with s' to adapt d' a version reduced of the religion. “I leaped when j' hear priests who speak about social questions or equitable trade, I say myself qu' they are not in their role. Aujourd' today, each one has its truth. Each one known as: “I am believer but not practitioner. ”” This d' kind; n' attitude; is not that of the father of Pommerol. Half-measure and compromised does not form undoubtedly part of its vocabulary. “J' endorsed my priesthood like an armour”, says it. An uncle Jesuit, a cardinal great-uncle, Benoit de Pommerol n' is not a priest of the contemplative kind. Ordered in 1997, it joined l' military chaplaincy in 1999. Its examples are those large Christian soldiers, the Lyautey marshal, the Father Charles de Foucauld or the general of Sonis, which fought with the head of the pontifical zouaves. “They wrote luminous things. ” It reads each day the life of the saints, or the writings of prison of Thomas More. He also likes to quote the sentence of the cardinal André Julien: “S' in holding in all and always with truth, the Juste, l' equitable, won't this be often a true torture? It will be like a martyrdom for the truth and justice.”

In ten years of service as military chaplain, the father of Pommerol took part in eight external operations, and is with its third stay in Afghanistan. It also celebrated six burials since the beginning of its priesthood. Two legionaries of the 2nd REFERENCE MARK died in Afghanistan since the beginning of the mission of the regiment with Sarobi. The last was the sergeant Konrad Rygiel of the group of commandos parachutists, killed on June 7 in a fixing with insurrectionists in the village of Payendakhel, in the valley of Tagab. Last April, Padre had celebrated l' burial of the legionary Robert Hutnik, also killed in Tagab. “In my sermon, this day, j' said to the legionaries: “Live as if you will die aujourd' today. ”” The father of Pommerol was, the day of died the d' Hutnik, in a nearby station, too far being able to give l' extreme unction with dying. “I m' in please still not have been able to be, known as there Padre. I think permanently of deaths, says it, since the first d' between them, the Master principal Loïc the Page, of the Trépel commando, killed at Spin Boldak in the south of l' Afghanistan in March 2006, of which j' had celebrated funerals, jusqu' with our legionaries.”