Guy Gilbert

Guy Gilbert celebrating a Mass in 2015

Guy Gilbert (born 12 September 1935) is a French Catholic priest and educator.

Biography


Born in Rochefort, Gilbert was educated at a seminary in Algeria and ministered in Algiers until 1970. He returned to France, to Paris, where he specialised in working with juvenile delinquents in the working-class 19th arrondissement where there was a sizable pied noir community. He purchased a farm in southern France, in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and established the Bergerie du Faucon centre where troubled youngsters might be reeducated and reintegrated into society through work, contact with animals and nature, and self-respect.

Father Gilbert dressed in civilian clothes

Guy Gilbert is thought to be a mentor of and a father figure for Prince Laurent of Belgium.[according to whom?] In 2003, he married Laurent and Claire Coombs at the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula in Brussels. In 2011, he took part in the First Communion of their daughter Princess Louise.

A regular radio correspondent with Radio Notre-Dame, a frequent interviewee on television, a journalist with La Croix, and an author, Guy Gilbert is known for his atypical presentation; his long grey hair, his battered leather jacket, and his unorthodox language. Former President Jacques Chirac made him a chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur. He received the award from Abbé Pierre.

On 12 December 2015 Gilbert officiated the Catholic marriage between Belgian singer Paul Van Haver, known as Stromae, and his wife Coralie Barbier in Martin's Patershof, a former church in Mechelen.

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