LAGRASSE, France (LifeSiteNews) –– A prominent French volleyball player has announced that he intends to join a small, traditional community of canons, fresh from captaining his team to winning the national volleyball championship.
Speaking to Ouest France, 32-year-old Ludovic Duée announced his intention to join the Canons Regular of the Mother of God. Duée stated that he was choosing between a “vocation and a profession.”
In recent days, the professional volleyball player captained his team of Saint-Nazaire Volley-Ball Atlantique to take the French national volleyball title. But the national championship game is also to be his last, according to his own statements to the media.
Duée will enter the Canons Regular this year, where he will spend the first several months as a postulant. Based in the South of France, the relatively young community follows the Rule of St. Augustine and has a Marian spirituality based on Sts. Louis-Marie de Montfort and Maximilian Kolbe.
Raised Catholic but without really paying much attention to his faith as a teenager, Duée said that he used to view God as someone “with a gun, ready to hit me if I went out of the way.”
His discovery of the Canons came during the years of restrictions related to COVID-19, during which he was forced into a period of more intense reflection. After meeting the Canons, who were close to where he was living, the volleyball star stated his perceptions of God changed. He abandoned his idea of “a threatening Father who was there to give blows,” in favor of “a loving God.”
“I discovered that God loved me, and that he only waited for one thing, for me to love him too.” This, he said, “was the basis of this journey.”
Founded in 1971, the community numbers approximately 39 male religious, with a female branch of the order established about 30 kilometers away. Its members are devoted to the celebration of the traditional (or Latin) Mass.
After completing his postulancy, as presuming both he and the community discern he will continue, Duée will receive the habit and enter the novitiate that lasts for at least one year. Temporary vows are taken upon the completion of the novitiate, and it is around some five years after joining the community and taking the habit that a member takes permanent vows.
The Canons themselves state that their spiritual life “is that of the Christian life: to belong to Christ and to live in Church. This naturally calls for devotion to the Blessed Virgin, model and Mother of the Church.” They note that in their community, the Marian devotion particularly employs the consecration to Mary.
As Canons, the members of the community have a special charism of living in community and being based at their particular church. Their canonical life is built upon the liturgy, living a common life in both work and prayer, and their apostolate.
“The objective is to become a priest. I respond to what I consider to be an inner call,” Duée said. He warmly described the Canons as being “very dynamic and very open to the world, with a very pronounced apostolic side.”
Indeed, the young community has attracted numerous families and young people around them, offering retreats for men and women, marriage preparation and a place for students to spend time in quiet study and prayer.
Visitors to the abbey are also afforded the opportunity to take spiritual direction with one of the canons, and the canons are regularly seen leading and taking part in various pilgrimages to ancient shrines across France.
While the canons sell some of their produce to support their daily life, they rely on the support of donors for their needs and the current restoration of the abbey itself.