Eglise Danoise de la Côte d’Azur

Danish Church in Southern France serves Francophiles and business families

The French title sounds a little more exotic, but both names denote an unusual Danish church abroad. Following on from last year’s series highlighting 6 Danish Churches Abroad, we shall occasionally focus on others of their kind.

The Danish pastor, Carl Bjarkram, arrived 2 years ago with his wife and two young children – from a country pastorate near Assens on Funen. He described his life in France to Bo Nygaard Larsen in the Danish Churches Abroad newsletter recently. ”The major difference here is that our church is self-financing. We receive no grant from Denmark, so a good deal of my time goes with administration and fund-raising. We have a pastorate but no church as yet. Our congregation is a bit of a mix – as in Denmark. There are a lot of retired people but also a number of young business people with their children. This year we celebrated Lent for the first time with 15 children, which must be counted a success. And then there were the two confirmations in May. The job requires a great deal of flexibility with ’many jobs in many rooms’, but I see that only as a challenge, not as a limitation.”

Services are held one Sunday a month in Église St. Georges in Cannes. The service on 24th October is a Scandinavian service with the participation of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish pastors in Southern France. “Our dream is to have our own church one day,” says Carl Bjarkram. “It will make it easier to gather our activities and create our own place. The Danes down here definitely want their church – including its liturgy, its language and its sermons. So the church serves as a social centre as well as a place to exchange visiting-cards.”

On the Autumn programme are: visits from opera singer Visti Hald and Professor Inge Marstal to sing and talk about Carl Nielsen; a conversation between radio presenter and writer Tine Bryld and her biographer, Gitte Loekkegaard; and a trip to the medieval mountain village of La Brigue and the pilgrims chapel of Notre Dame des Fontaines.

And preparations are already under way for this year’s Christmas market!

 

Edward Broadbridge

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