Continuing the conference on Christian consecration given days earlier, Maxime Menga sscc, of the Africa Province and a doctoral candidate in Paris, offered a second conference within the Poitiers Session 2026, titled "Dedicated to the Point of Giving One's Life: Following the Footsteps of the Martyrs of Picpus."
On this occasion, Fr. Menga brought theological reflection into the field of history, presenting martyrdom as "a privileged observatory of the truth of Christian consecration." He focused especially on the witness of the Blessed Ladislas Radigue, Polycarpe Tuffier, Marcellin Rouchouze, and Frézal Tardieu, religious of the Congregation shot on Rue Haxo in Paris on May 26, 1871, during the "bloody week" of the Commune, and beatified at Saint-Sulpice in 2023.
The conference traced their spiritual profiles — formators, educators, administrators, men forged in daily fidelity before the trial — the time of their captivity, understood as a "paschal reduction" that strips away all human support, and the daily recitation of Psalm 15 in their cell, a true "interior grammar of consecration." Menga emphasized that the martyrdom was not a rupture or an improvised gesture, but the culmination of a life already shaped according to the logic of self-giving proper to SSCC spirituality.
The reflection closed with a call to reconciled memory: the memory of the martyrs of Picpus is not preserved to feed resentment, but as a seed of peace, forgiveness, and ecclesial renewal — an invitation that remains open today to live one's own consecration as "that in whose service I will live and die."
In 1894 a chapel was erected on the very site of the martyrdom, at number 85 Rue Haxo, and years later the church of Notre-Dame des Otages ("Our Lady of the Hostages") was built there. The four SSCC martyrs were beatified on April 22, 2023, at the church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, together with Father Planchat. After Maxime's conference, we made a pilgrimage to this parish, where the priest and historian Jacques Benoit gave us the historical context of the Paris Commune. There we celebrated the Eucharist, presided over by Christian Flottes sscc, of the France Province, who in his homily sketched the profile of the four sscc martyrs — two of them formators of Saint Damien De Veuster — also referring to four beautiful prayers by Frézal Tardieu. After Mass, we went to the site where our brothers were martyred. Christian also prepared that day's meal, which we shared in one of the parish's halls.
We thank the SSCC brothers and sisters of France for their welcome and availability during these days in Paris. Our Session now continues in Belgium, following the footsteps of Saint Damien De Veuster.
07/11/2026