Michael August - September 2013

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by Sandro Magister
The title of this article is the same one that the
Italian newspaper Avvenire gave to a feature report
from Marseille by its correspondent Marina Corradi,
in the footsteps of the pastor of a neighbourhood be-
hind the old port.
A pastor: whose Masses are crowded with people;
who hears confessions every evening until late at
night; who has baptized many converts; who always
wears the cassock so that everyone may recognize
him as a priest even from far away.
Michel-Marie Zanotti-Sorkine was born in 1959
in Nice, to a family a bit Russian and a bit Corsican.
As a young man he sang in the nightclubs in Paris,
but then over the years there emerged the vocation
to the priesthood he had had since his childhood.
His guides were Fr. Joseph-Marie Perrin, who was
Simone Weil’s spiritual director, and Fr. Marie-Domi-
nique Philippe, founder of the congregation of Saint
John. He studied in Rome at the Angelicum, the theo-
logical faculty of the Dominicans. He was ordained a
priest in 2004 by Cardinal Bernard Panafieu, the arch-
bishop of Marseille at the time. He writes books, the
latest of which is entitled Au diable la tiédeur (To the
devil with lukewarmness). This book is dedicated to
priests. He is pastor at Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.
And in this parish located around Rue Canabière,
which leads from the old port through ramshackle
houses and shops, with many homeless, immigrants,
gypsies, where tourists do not venture to go, in a
Marseille and in a France where religious practice is
almost everywhere at the lowest levels, Fr. Michel-
Marie has made the Catholic faith blossom again.
How? Marina Corradi went and saw. And she
tells us what she found.
The feature was published in Avvenire, the news-
paper of the Italian episcopal conference, on Novem-
ber 29, 2012. It was the first in a series that presented
witnesses of the faith, known and less well-known,
capable of generating evangelical astonishment in
those who meet them.
“The Pope is right: everything
must start afresh from Christ”
by Marina Corradi
That black tunic fluttering along Rue Canabière,
among a crowd more Maghrebi than French, makes
you turn around. Check it out, a priest, and dressed
like once upon a time, on the streets of Marseille. A
dark-haired man, smiling, and yet with something re-
served and monastic about him. And what a story be-
hind him: he sang in the nightclubs in Paris, was or-
dained only eight years ago and since then has been
pastor here, at Saint-Vincent-de-Paul.
But in reality the story is even more complicat-
ed: Michel-Marie Zanotti-Sorkine, 53, is descended
from a Russian Jewish grandfather who immigrated
into France and had his daughters baptized before
the war. One of these daughters, who escaped the
Holocaust, brought into the world Fr. Michel-Marie,
who on his father’s side is half Corsican and half Ital-
ian. (What a bizarre mix, you think: and you look with
amazement at his face, trying to understand what a
man is like who has such a tangle of roots.) But if
one Sunday you enter his packed church and listen to
how he speaks of Christ with simple everyday words,
and if you observe the religious slowness of the ele-
vation of the host, in an absolute silence, you ask
yourself who this priest is, and what it is in him that
draws people, bringing back those who are far away.
Finally you have him in front of you, in his white,
monastic rectory. He seems younger than his years;
he does not have those wrinkles of bitterness which
mark the face of a man with time. There is a peace
upon him, a joy that is astonish-
ing. But who are you?, you would
like to ask him immediately.
During a frugal meal, the
highlights of an entire life are re-
vealed. Two splendid parents; the
mother, baptized but only formally
Catholic, allows her son to go to
church. The faith is imparted to
him “by an elderly priest, a Sal-
esian in a black cassock, a man
of generous and boundless faith.”
The desire, at the age of eight, to
be a priest. At thirteen he loses his
mother: “The pain devastated me.
And yet I never doubted God.”
Adolescence, music, and that
beautiful voice. The piano bars of
Paris, which may seem little suited
to discerning a religious vocation.
And yet, while the decision slowly
ripens, the spiritual fathers of Michel-Marie tell him to
keep to the nightlife of Paris: because there as well a
sign is needed. Finally the vocation pays off. In 1999,
at the age of 40, his childhood wish comes true: a
priest, and in a cassock, like that elderly Salesian.
Why the cassock? “For me” – he smiles – “it is
a work uniform. It is intended to be a sign for those
who meet me, and above all for those who do not
believe. In this way I am recognizable as a priest,
always. In this way on the streets I take advantage of
every opportunity to make friends. Father, someone
asks me, where is the post office? Come on, I’ll go
with you, I reply, and meanwhile we talk, and I dis-
cover that the children of that man are not baptized.
Bring them to me, I say in the end; and I often baptize
them later. I seek in every way to show with my face a
good humanity. Just the other day” – he laughs – “in
a cafe an old man asked me which horses he should
bet on. I gave him the horses. I asked the Blessed
Mother for forgiveness: but you know, I said to her,
it is to befriend this man. As a priest who was one of
my teachers used to tell those who asked him how
to convert the Marxists: ‘One has to become their
friend,’ he would reply.”
Then, in church, the Mass is stark and beautiful.
The affable priest of Canabière is a rigorous priest.
Why take so much care with the liturgy? “I want
everything to be splendid around the Eucharist. I
want that at the elevation, the people should under-
stand that He is here, truly. It is not theater, it is not
superfluous pomp: it is inhabiting the Mystery. The
heart too needs to feel.”
He insists a great deal on the responsibility of the
priest, and in one of his books – he has written many
books, and still writes songs sometimes – he affirms
that a priest who has an empty
church must examine himself and
say: “It is we who lack fire.” He ex-
plains: “The priest is ‘alter Chris-
tus,’ he is called to reflect Christ
in himself. This does not mean
asking perfection of ourselves;
but being conscious of our sins,
of our misery, in order to be able
to understand and pardon anyone
who comes to the confessional.”
Fr. Michel-Marie goes to
the confessional every evening,
with absolute punctuality, at five
o’clock, without fail. (The people,
he says, must know that the priest
is there, in any case). Then he re-
mains in the sacristy until eleven
o’clock, for anyone who might
want to go to him: “I want to give
the sign of an unlimited avail-
ability.” Judging by the constant
pilgrimage of the faithful, in the evening, one would
say that it works. Like a deep demand that emerges
from this city, apparently far removed. What do they
want ? “The first thing is to hear someone say: you
are loved. The second: God has a plan for you. One
must not make them feel judged, but welcomed.
They must be made to understand that the only one
who can change their lives is Christ. And Mary. There
are two things that, in my view, permit a return to the
faith: the Marian embrace, and impassioned apolo-
getics, which touches the heart.”
“Those who seek me out,” he continues, “are
asking first of all for human assistance, and I try to
give all the help possible. Not forgetting that the beg-
gar needs to eat, but also has a soul. To the offended
woman I say: send me your husband, I will talk to
him. But then, how many come to say that they are
sad, that their lives are no good... Then I ask them:
how long has it been since you went to confession?
Because I know that sin is a burden, and the sadness
of sin is a torment. I am convinced that what makes
Fr. Michel-Marie Zanotti-Sorkine,
a cassock in deep Marseille
The life, works, and mir-
acles of a priest in a city
of France, who has made
the faith blossom again
where it had withered.
u
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