Nine parishes join Father Tourquetil to mark fifty years as a priest

A host of friends and faithful from the nine parishes in the area met on a Sunday afternoon in the church of Vierville for the fifty years of the priesthday of Abbé Tourquetil. The fresh flowers and audience gave the solemn Mass a particularly moving character.

The priest, present for eighteen years with these parishes, recalled that he had chosen his vocation very early. Faced with the growing lack of priests, he invited those who felt called to join the Church. More than two hundred people participated in the wine of honor. An armchair, a CD-radio-cassette player and other gifts were offered to him. In the evening, more than one hundred and ten guests met at La Marquerie, in Grandcamp-Maisy, for a warm meal.

Born in Commes in 1917, Georges Tourquetil had spent his childhood there. Entered the Caen seminary at the age of eleven, he remained there until 1934 before the grand seminary, completed in 1943. He had received the sub-diaconate on March 20, 1943 in the Carmel chapel of Lisieux, then the diaconate on May 30 at the chapel of the bishopric of Bayeux. Nineteen days later, he was ordained a priest at Bayeux Cathedral. He kept a vivid memory of Abbé Chemin, who died thirty-eight years earlier according to the article.

Professor with the Petits Clercs de Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux until 1954, he then worked for two years at Saint-Jean de Caen. Appointed in 1956 in Saint-Pierre-la-Vieille, near Condé-sur-Noireau, he had accompanied the teenagers and children of the Bocage as a chaplain. In 1970, he joined the Molay-Littry priestly community as a priest and parish priest.

His health led him to resign in October 1973 and spend a year in Saint-Pierre de Caen. Returning to Bessin in 1975, in Vierville, he had been dean of the Aure for six years. Father Tourquetil insisted on the happiness he had found in exercising the functions of priest and parish priest during these fifty years.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/Photos2008/1993-PereTourquetilNocesOrJuillet93.jpg