Paris keeps its English-speaking churches within about 15 minutes of each other, and most people only find that out after they have spent a Saturday evening looking for one. 4 of the 5 places below sit in the 8th and 16th arrondissements between the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de la Concorde, so a British visitor staying near the Champs-Elysées could walk to a Church of England service, an English Mass and a Church of Scotland service on the same Sunday without touching the Metro. The 5th stands up the hill at Montmartre and has had someone praying inside it every hour since 1885, which makes it a different kind of offer altogether, and it has been included for the people who want silence more than a sermon.
The times below are the ones each church published for the autumn. All of them shift in July and August, so a summer traveller should check the parish website in the week before leaving.
1: Saint Michael’s Paris, The Church Behind The British Embassy
Saint Michael’s occupies 5 rue d’Aguesseau, a short street off the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, with the British Embassy round the corner, which explains why English visitors were pointed here for most of the last century. It belongs to the Church of England’s Diocese in Europe and calls itself evangelical Anglican, so a family used to a lively parish at home, with a worship band and a long sermon, would find the 10.45 service familiar down to the coffee afterwards. There are 3 services on a Sunday, at 9.30, 10.45 and 18.00. The 9.30 runs shorter and more traditionally, with Anglican liturgy, a brief sermon, Communion and hymns on the organ, and it suits the person whose aim for the morning was to sit in a pew and hear the Prayer Book rhythm in their own language. The 10.45 caters for families and runs children’s groups during French term time, while the 18.00 draws the young adults to a contemporary evening service that ends with a question and answer session.
Does a church this close to the Embassy feel like a British enclave? Less than it once did, because the congregation now arrives from a long list of countries and a Tamil service at 14.00 and a French one at 17.00 share the same Sunday. What it does still offer an Englishman with no French at all is a building he can walk into on a Sunday morning and follow every word, where the people at the door have met a hundred visitors like him and can tell him that Concorde and Madeleine are both about 5 minutes on foot.
2: Saint George’s, Where The 1662 Prayer Book Is Still Said At 8.30
Saint George’s, the other Anglican church in the city, could hardly be more different. It stands at 7 rue Auguste Vacquerie in the 16th, a few minutes from the Arc de Triomphe, in a modern building put up in 1978 for a congregation that had been meeting since 1824. The tradition here is Anglo-Catholic, so the main 10.30 Sunday service is a Solemn Eucharist with a choir, a sung mass setting, incense and a sermon, and it runs to an hour and a quarter before the drinks and the lunch that usually follow. A visitor from the UK who grew up on cathedral evensong would recognise it at once, because nothing else in Paris has a choir singing an English liturgy every week.
The service that earns Saint George’s its place on this list comes earlier. At 8.30 every Sunday there is Holy Communion from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, said and not sung, with no hymns and no sermon, and it has finished inside 25 minutes. The church calls it a quiet and reflective service, and that description holds. It suits the person who wants Communion in the old words and the rest of the Sunday free for the city. Saint George’s also keeps a weekday pattern that few churches on a tourist route can match: Evening Prayer at 18.00 from Monday to Friday, a Eucharist at 18.30 on 4 of those evenings and at midday on Wednesday and Saturday, and on Wednesday the Evening Prayer is followed by Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for those who would rather stay on in silence. The doors open 15 minutes before each service and the building does not stay open for wandering between them, so the way to see the inside is to come for one of these and stay for it.
3: Saint Joseph’s, The English Mass On Avenue Hoche
Catholic visitors have one address to remember, because Saint Joseph’s at 50 avenue Hoche is the only parish in central Paris where every Mass is celebrated in English. Founded in 1863 and still run by the Passionist fathers, it now counts parishioners from more than 40 countries, so a Sunday congregation there sounds more like an airport departure lounge than a village in Hampshire. Sunday Masses are at 9.30, 11.00, 12.30 and 18.30, Saturday has a morning Mass at 11.00 and the vigil at 18.30, and on weekdays an 8.30 Mass sits nicely before the museums open. Confession is heard on Saturday between 17.00 and 18.15. The church stays open on weekdays from 8 in the morning until 5, which makes it one of the easier places here to drop into for 10 minutes of quiet on a Tuesday afternoon.
From the Etoile the walk takes 5 minutes down avenue Hoche, and because the church is set back from the pavement it is easily passed. The 11.00 on Sunday fills first. The 12.30 rescues a morning that ran late, and it is also the one a family can reach from the other end of the RER A, because a Sunday checkout at a Disney hotel comes well before any of the morning Masses, and a family who has left the cases in luggage lockers in Disneyland Paris and taken the train from Marne-la-Vallée is at the Etoile in about 50 minutes with nothing to carry up the aisle. The 18.30 on Sunday evening collects the people who spent the day out at Versailles or Giverny and still wanted to get to Mass, a habit that anyone over from England for a weekend break will recognise.
4: The Scots Kirk On Rue Bayard, Where Eric Liddell Preached In 1924
The Scots Kirk at 17 rue Bayard is the only Church of Scotland congregation in France, and it has held this site since 1885 after 27 years of borrowing other people’s buildings. The present church was finished in 2002 and sits in the ground floor of a block of flats, so the front door looks like nothing much and the room inside runs plain, warm and modern, with screens by the sculptor Jacqueline Stieger and none of the gilt that fills the Catholic churches 10 minutes away. There is 1 service, at 11.00 on Sunday, in English and in the Reformed tradition. Holy Communion is celebrated once a month, tea and coffee follow every service, and now and then there is a pot luck lunch that a visitor would be expected to stay for.
Two stories bring people from the UK here who are not Presbyterian at all. The first belongs to Eric Liddell, who came to this church to preach on the Sunday of the 1924 Olympics instead of running his 100 metre heat, the decision the film Chariots of Fire was built around, and the kirk tells the story to anybody who asks. The second belongs to Donald Caskie, the minister here in 1940, who went south when the Germans arrived, ran an escape line for Allied servicemen out of Marseille, and wrote it up afterwards as The Tartan Pimpernel. Queen Elizabeth II had laid the foundation stone of the previous building on this site in 1957. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Champs-Elysées Clemenceau are the nearest Metro stations, about 4 minutes away.
5: Sacré-Cœur, Where The Praying Has Not Stopped Since 1 August 1885
The first 4 places are for a service. Sacré-Cœur is for the hour of silence that many Christians go abroad hoping for and rarely find, because the churches they wander into are either locked or full of tour groups. The basilica at the top of Montmartre opens every day from 6.30 in the morning until 22.30, with no exceptions and no charge to come in, and behind the high altar there is a chapel where the Blessed Sacrament has been exposed continuously, day and night, since 1 August 1885. That vigil has run through 2 world wars and the German occupation and the pandemic, and the counter on the basilica’s own website had passed 51,000 nights when it was last checked. During the day the chapel is open to whoever wants to sit, and no one at the door asks about your denomination.
Is the basilica itself quiet? Not in the nave between 10 and 6, when the coaches arrive and the crowd on the steps comes in to see the 475 square metre mosaic of Christ in Majesty over the apse. The quiet lives in the chapel and at the edges of the day. Whoever comes at 6.30 when the doors open will have the building nearly to themselves for the 7.00 Mass, and whoever stays for the 22.00 Mass will watch it empty out around them. Daily Masses run at 7.00, 8.00, 9.00, 11.00, 18.00 and 22.00, and on Sunday the 11.00 is the Solemn Mass with the Schola choir, during which the nave is kept for worshippers and the sightseers are held back, which makes it the hour to be inside if the aim is to worship. The Masses are in French. For a Catholic that matters less than it sounds, since they will know where they are in the liturgy, and for a Protestant visitor it matters more, so the chapel should be treated as the reason for the trip and the Mass as something to sit through.
For the full version, the basilica takes registrations for the night of adoration. Guests stay in the sanctuary’s own guesthouse, collect a bracelet from the reception desk between 20.30 and 21.30, follow a spiritual introduction at 21.00 and sung Compline at 21.30, hear the 22.00 Mass, and then keep an hour or more before the Blessed Sacrament at some point between 23.00 and 7.00 so that the relay is never broken. Bookings go through +33 1 53 41 89 00 between 9 and 6, and Monday nights run without the introduction and Compline. It is not one to attempt on the last night before an early Eurostar, but on a Friday with nothing planned for Saturday morning it might be the most unusual thing a Christian can do in Paris.
Putting The 5 Together On A Weekend
A British visitor arriving on the Friday evening Eurostar and leaving on Sunday night could take in the whole list without much planning. Friday goes to Sacré-Cœur, either for the 22.00 Mass and the emptying nave or for the night of adoration if it had been booked ahead. Saturday morning offers the midday Eucharist at Saint George’s or the 11.00 Mass at Saint Joseph’s, both 5 minutes from the Etoile. Sunday morning is the awkward one, because everything a churchgoer would want to hear happens between 8.30 and 11.00 and only one of them can be chosen. The 8.30 Prayer Book Communion at Saint George’s leaves the rest of the morning free, and from its door the 10.45 at Saint Michael’s is a 25 minute walk east along the Faubourg Saint-Honoré while the 11.00 at the Scots Kirk is 15 minutes south. The 18.30 Mass at Saint Joseph’s and the 18.00 evening service at Saint Michael’s both fit before a 9 o’clock train, though the Gare du Nord is 30 minutes from either by Metro and the platform shuts 30 minutes before departure. By the end of it the visitor has heard the same faith in 3 accents and 2 traditions, and has sat for an hour in a chapel where the person in the next chair was there at 4 in the morning and will be back tomorrow.