“When Étienne Villemain [the executive director], the ‘enfant terrible,’ who brought this project together with so many others, first told me about it, I could not help but tell him that I was wary of what the Holy Spirit might inspire in him,” Pope Francis said in an address to members of Village de François.

“The Village de François was conceived on the basis of the conviction that ‘everything is linked,’ and you experience this concretely by associating the environment and respect for human life from conception to natural death, prayer and fraternity, and also by bringing different generations together,” the Pope continued. “I count on your testimony to show that life according to the Gospel is found in the balanced consideration of all these aspects.”