(a lot of people are grousing about the soon-to-be released, The Da Vinci Code. Canadian priest, Father Bernard F. Heffernan, will be right on site when the film is released at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday, where he will launch The First Religious Music Festival Cannes, 2006 at a church directly across from the Festival pavilion.)
Cannes-- Cannes is a city of white buildings and red tiled roofs surrounding a small bay of the blue Mediterranean. The inlet holds many large expensive white sailing boats and yachts whose wealthy owners are spread around the world. a few hundred yards back from the sandy beach, I am sitting outdoors on a park bench, pen and paper in hand, jotting down the sights, sounds and smells of Cannes. Fresh green palm leaves and the fresh sea perfume the air.
across the four lane La Croisette Boulevard is a Casino, To the left, a 2,300-seat Theatre, which will open the Film |Festival with the premiere showing of the world famous `Da Vinci Code'. I shall attend as a member of the press sending my stories to over 300 newspapers and an internet newspaper with a monthly readership of 500,000.
High from each boulevard lamp posts hang two banners "Bienvenu a Cannes 06"; the other--a black banner, framing an orange insert, enclosing a black, silhouette--the mysterious figure of a lady — perhaps Mary Magdalene or the purported `Divine Feminine'.
In a nook in the front of the Theatre is the tourist office where one girl always smiles at me, because a day earlier I asked her if she was a movie star. This day the movie star is busy. She directs me to a girl from Serbia, `anna', the name of the grandmother of Jesus. She nods and hands me pamphlets. abounding with information, I head for the door and restaurant across the street.
The manager offers me a seat to read and write, but the stuffy walls and windows inhibit my Cannes experience. So I return outside to sit on the park bench, by the sidewalk where pedestrians walk in sandals and jeans; babies ride in carriages, each a precious film star to mom and dad. Children skip along licking coloured ice cream.
a white stretch wedding limousine leads a party of honking cars, joyful horns filling the Saturday afternoon air with the happiness of forever land. On La Croisette Boulevard, tour buses cruise, stopping to pick up or let off. Every ten minutes a couple of motorcycles whiz past, followed by a street sweeping machine. Immaculate streets solve the pigeon problem. None are seen pecking in the impeccable asphalt, or soaring in the buttermilk sky. a white police car quietly passes every 20 minutes. at regular intervals, white sanitized garbage bags are gathered with a small, narrow pickup.
Such is the boardwalk of Cannes, a city on the eve of hosting thousands of fans, reporters and actors, buyers and sellers, and the Da Vinci Code. Seems the town is extra careful to preserve a clean, pristine image lest it be soiled by any garbage in the theatres.
Half a block up a narrow street, a funeral hearse and cars surround the famous church of Notre Dame du Bon Voyage. Their beloved pastor of 41 years, Father Michel Beaugeois has died and a large crying crowd has turned out to bid farewell. a choir, second, to none, welcomes the body up the aisle, to be welcomed by a by a sanctuary full of priests. Two of them drape the casket with a white chasuble and gold stole, the way Father Michel was welcomed into the priesthood 58 years ago. Likewise he departs.
His church, Notre Dame de Bon Voyage was built in the 1800s, so magnificently, that when passing through on his return from the Isle of Elba, the great Emperor Napoleon stopped to carve his name on a lower beam. Later, when the fallen Napoleon was imprisoned on the Island of St. Helena, he reflected that his downfall began when he attacked God's Church.
Dan Brown and Ron Howard are the new Napoleons, the great generals, having captured not just Europe and Russia but the whole world; not by guns and armies, but by film.
When Father Beaugeois was a young seminarian he must have read the story of another famous Frenchman, one of France's greatest saints, the Cure D'ars. When this priest was sent into the sinful, sex stricken town of ars, France, the young men were angry because he persuaded the girls to stop sinning with the boys. They persuaded a girl of the night to stand under his window and yell out "The Cure of ars molested me."
The usually jovial Father Michel became serious. He knew that "to make up lies and spread them" against the saintly priest was a terrible sin of calumny. He could think of nothing worse. But half a century later there was worse.
Father Michel discovered that the world had become ars. Many people, so sex stricken and sex driven that they would applaud and follow anyone; who would topple not only the Cure of ars, but God Himself--Jesus.
Worse still! the very unveiling of this conspiracy of lies; this hideous moral, mutiny called the "Da Vinci Code" is on a scale the world has never seen before--even in Biblical times. This calumny of global dimensions stretching from the abyss of hell to the heights of Heaven would take place, not in the little hidden village of ars, but in his own beloved Cannes, in his beloved parish. Perhaps Father Michel preferred to die rather than see such a desecration in his parish, named after the Mother of God--Notre Dame du Bon Voyage.
Bon Voyage Pere Michel. "May your soul be welcomed into the illustrious company of the great French Saints, Joan d' arc, Louis Trieze, Catherine Laboure, John Brefeuf and Companions who were Martyred bringing the true faith to Canada and the United States. amen"
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