This year's Chartres Pilgrimage boosted a hefty dose of star power:

CatholicHerald.com: “Chartres sonne, Chartres t’appelle! Gloire, honneur au Christ-Roi!” Under a radiant sky a stream of singing pilgrims stretches across the French countryside. It is Pentecost weekend and roughly 12,000 people are walking from Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris to Chartres, the cathedral town about 50 miles south of the capital.

The pilgrimage, which has taken place for the past 36 years, is organised by the traditionalist group Notre-Dame de Chrétienté (Our Lady of Christendom). This year the pilgrims are joined by Vatican liturgy chief Cardinal Robert Sarah.

But there is another star in the crowd: Marion Maréchal, niece of Front National leader Marine Le Pen. She is tackling the pilgrimage with a group of friends. At first, she keeps a low profile: she is just another pilgrim among pilgrims. But her anonymity does not last long. Other participants soon ask if they can be photographed with her. “Thank you for being here,” says one pilgrim after another.

Marion Maréchal (middle) at a break on Pentecost Monday

Maréchal officially retired from politics last year after her aunt was heavily defeated by Emmanuel Macron in the presidential election. But this precocious figure, who became an MP in 2012 at the age of 22, already seems to be planning her return to front-line politics. Last autumn she helped to found L’Incorrect, a conservative magazine run by some of her followers and serving as a vehicle for her ideas. And last month she launched a private school in Lyon, the Institut de Sciences Sociales, Economiques et Politiques (Issep). Raheem Kassam, the former editor-in-chief of Breitbart London and chief adviser to Ukip leader Nigel Farage, is part of the teaching team.

...Her presence on the Chartres pilgrimage was significant. Maréchal is clearly counting on the Catholic Right to help her in her comeback. 

REMNANT COMMENT: God's inscrutable ways are not ours, and exactly how and why He sometimes chooses even broken vessels to accomplish His Will is one of the great mysteries of history. But He does.

I don't know where this young lady will end up, but only the fool is not constantly scanning the horizon in France for any sign of the Divine Intervention that is absolutely inevitable where the Eldest Daughter of the Church is concerned. 

France is far from a lost cause. And somehow I think it's more than significant that this young lady keeps showing up at the premier traditional Catholic restoration event in the world today.

Remember, Marion Maréchal-Le Pen is no stranger to the Traditional Latin Mass. She attended the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit’s Institution Saint-Pie X in Paris, where she received her First Holy Communion and Confirmation in the old Rite and regularly attended the TLM.

Hope springs eternal, friends. Keep it alive, and be wary of those constantly trying to tear down and dismiss these little signs of God's grace at work, even in the prevailing darkness of modern-day France. Only the Devil has no hope.