Lou, soon to be baptized: ‘I didn’t have a father, but I have Him.’

“I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” Thousands of catechumens around the world are preparing to hear these words on Easter night when they will be baptized. Throughout Lent, Aleteia will share with you the stories of some of these men and women, who are happy to become children of God. 

Lou says it straight out: he is a “damaged soul.” At the age of 57, he’s about to be baptized on Easter night in the French diocese of Luçon (in the department of Vendée, on the western coast of France). “Now I can say that I’m at peace with myself, with my body, with my mind. I simply feel good,” he says.

This was far from being the case a few years ago. Before telling his story, Lou wants to warn us: “I have a 10-year gap in my life. I was in the DASS [the French government entity in charge of child welfare at the time, editor’s note], raped, burned, beaten. I learned my age and my surname at 11. I learned to read and write at 25.” He wrote his story in pain and doubt, but also with great resilience.

Although he arrived in the coastal resort of Les Sables-d'Olonne 24 years ago, Lou had previously worked “in the nightlife” for more than 30 years, doing a variety of jobs in security and as a waiter. During this period, he discovered Buddhism, without really identifying with it.

While he was juggling odd jobs, he met by chance the former bishop of Versailles, Bishop Jean-Charles Thomas [who died in 2023, editor's note], who used to have his morning coffee where Lou worked from time to time. “It was in 2004 or 2005. I told him about my life and he told me about Christ. He gave me my first Bible.” They regularly discussed what Lou was discovering in the Bible, in the Old and New Testaments; what touched him, but also what revolted him.

Time went by without Lou desiring to go further. A motorcycle accident and a “100-foot fall” from which he emerged unscathed challenged him again. “It's strange, but at that moment I felt two hands putting me on the ground,” he admits, almost embarrassed. He described this sensation at the hospital just after his accident, which resulted in an MRI and psychological follow-up to make sure he had no after-effects. But no. Nothing. He ended up moving to the department of Vendée, still carrying this Bible that he reread from time to time.

Over the years he met several Catholics who were involved in the diocese. He also discovered the books of Fr. Guy Gilbert, “the priest of young thugs,” which fascinated him. They gave him a new perspective on the Church and its various members. “Wrecked people like me,” he said with a smile.

Two years ago, he decided to ask for baptism, to take the step he had never dared to take before. But his trials weren’t over. Lou was then in a state of gender transition. “I feel like a woman in a man's body,” he confides. When he wrote to the bishop of Luçon to ask for baptism, Bishop François Jacolin first replied that he should “find out who he is.”

This was a response he hadn’t expected and which surprised him. At the same time, the treatment he was undergoing for his transition “was destroying his liver.” “My endocrinologist predicted that if I continued on this path, I’d have about six months to live,” he continues.

During a pilgrimage to Lourdes with the diocese, Bishop Jacolin asked him, ‘What do you want to do?’ And Lou replied, ”Live. I want to live.” The bishop asked him what that meant, what choices he had to make. “I hope I'm not mistaken, but I think that my liver giving up was also a sign that this was not the path for me. I had the impression that God was inviting me to stay in my body and to live,” he said. He then called his endocrinologist and stopped the process. “I have no regrets. I had the choice between two paths, that of light and that of darkness. I took the path of light.”

On April 19, during the Easter vigil, Bishop Jacolin will baptize him. Receiving baptism “means being even closer to God,” he said. “I tell myself that at last I will be recognized by Him as His Son. I didn't have a father and I had many violent stepfathers when I was young. I didn't have a father, but I have Him. When I talk to God, I talk to Him as I would to the father I never had.”