Out of Africa and on a mission Tending his flock: Father Rodolphe Folly from Togo meets the faithful in Saint-Vallier. Photo: The New York Times In Togo, Rodolphe Folly conducted exuberant Sunday services for believers of all ages, who sang local gospel music and offered him what they had. In this quiet town in Burgundy, he preaches to about 40 grey-haired retirees in an unadorned 19th-century church that can accommodate up to 600 people. "In my country, we applaud, we acclaim, we shout," says Father Folly, a Catholic priest. Here, even when I ask people to shake hands, they say no. Father Folly, 45, has settled in Saint-Vallier, a town of about 9000 residents. He replaces an ageing priest, and has brought his jovial smile and good heart to a place where religious practice is weak, as it is in many other areas of France. He is part of a battalion of priests who have come to France from places such as Benin, Burkina-Faso, Cameroon, Vietnam and Poland. These priests represent about 10 per cent of France's declining clerical ranks. The Catholic Church in western Europe and the US has been coping with a severe shortage of priests in the past few decades, as many abandoned the priesthood or died. Bishops in the developed world have been reaching out to counterparts in the developing world to bring priests from Africa, Asia and Latin America, where the priesthood is still appealing and vocations are booming. The flow of priests amounts to a brain drain within the church. The ratio of priests to parishes is just as bad, if not worse, in the developing world as it is in the West, but the Western nations have the resources to relocate and support these priests. Bishops from Europe and the US recruit priests from the global south in ad hoc arrangements with bishops and religious orders, usually without involvement from the Vatican. The flow of Catholic missionaries, who used to leave France, Italy, Ireland and the US for the developing world, has now been largely reversed. The decline of the priesthood as a vocation is particularly pronounced in France, a country that defines itself as secular. Magnificent churches dot the country, but France's clergy is old and ordinations of priests are in continuing decline. The average age of France's 14,000 priests is 72. At 1600, the number of foreign priests has nearly tripled over the past eight years, with many being recruited to parishes in urban areas and the Parisian suburbs. To church officials, this is not necessarily a bad thing. "They bring freshness, youth and another way to consider the pastoral," says Father Pierre-Yves Pecqueux, who heads international recruitment at the Conference des eveques de France, the church's bishops' committee. "They have their own way to speak about faith, and a joy to believe in God," he says. Most foreign priests are sent to France for three, six or nine years according to an agreement between bishops. They settle here on the basis of the "Fidei Donum" (Gift of Faith), the 1957 encyclical that encouraged bishops to open themselves "to the universal needs of the church." Some also serve as part-time priests, having gone there primarily to study theology in French universities. The church organises sessions to welcome foreign priests and train them for the religious realities of France. The newcomers are given information about the history of Catholicism in France, the specifics of state secularism and the use of social media. For many priests, the fundamental problem is the church's struggle to define itself for a new generation in a secular country and amid a de-Christianising trend in western Europe. Many young French people consider Catholicism the religion of guilt, often ill-adapted to social realities and harmed by the continuing scandals over sexual abuse of children. In 2012, only 56 per cent of the French declared themselves Catholic, compared with 81 per cent in 1986, according to a study conducted in 2012 by the CSA polling institute. By last year, 47 per cent of those aged 18 to 24 said they were "of no religion." Father Thomas Magimel, who serves 48 churches in the Dordogne, says that the influx of African priests is not a long-term solution to the church's problems. They're better placed to talk about the gospel in their country and it would be selfish of us to abuse their generosity. In Saint-Vallier, Father Folly does his laundry, cooks his meals and puzzles over French practices. In Togo, he says, priests are respected figures who visit people's homes and employ full-time cooks. Here the priest is a mere citizen who has a job that many others don't do. Once a month, Father Folly lays a table near the front door of his church and invites parishioners for a "friendship drink" with red wine, snacks and candy for the children. "I've given up my culture, my family to come here and live in solitude," he says. But my presence here says how universal the church is.