A Life of Faith and Service
Catherine & Christophe Bernard, RC for the Secretariat – ERI

We are Catherine and Christophe Bernard, and we first met in 1978, when we were 18 and 19 years old, in a small hamlet in the Alps—a historic center of French and European mountaineering. This village, the cradle of Catherine’s maternal family of renowned guides and climbers, is La Bérarde. On June 21, 2024, La Bérarde was erased from the map after the rupture of a sub-glacial lake.

The family’s hotel-restaurant—especially its little café where Catherine worked during the summers, and where we first met—was destroyed, along with the chapel beside it where her parents were married. The small family chalet was swept away completely by the torrent. Catherine’s family remains in shock, having lost everything, with rebuilding forbidden.

Our very first shared memories, once filled with life and promise, now carry the deep wound of this tragic loss.

Our journey as a couple has been guided by powerful events and unforgettable encounters.

After this meeting in the summer of 1978 and the exchange of our postal addresses, Christophe wrote a letter to Catherine. A long correspondence of several years followed which truly allowed us to get to know each other better. After seeing each other a few times on weekends or during holidays in the South where Catherine lived or studied, Catherine decided to move to Paris.

Christophe’s godmother then advised us to meet an old priest well known to her. These few interviews with him were both delightful and determining for the evolution of our faith. Here are, from memory, the two sentences that marked us for life: “Man would be the most deceived of animals if he were conscious all his life that with death everything was finished. Whereas in Jesus Christ death is only a stage since we are all called to resurrection and eternal life“. This changes everything. Second sentence: “only God is great enough to satisfy all of Man’s needs, to fill him with total happiness. The spouse, whoever they may be, cannot do so without God.“

These encounters convinced us to resume religious practice and we were fortunate to meet a priest and a group of young people who gave us both the taste to go to mass every Sunday, participate in a prayer group and then, once married, participate in a group of households, who became our most faithful friends.

After four years of marriage -we now have been married 41 years – just before moving, a priest directed us toward the Teams of Our Lady. The prospect of joining a structured movement pleased us greatly because we had become aware that a simple parish movement quickly reached its limits in terms of theme proposals, team constitution, variety of encounters, services to ensure…

We entered the piloting period of Teams in the autumn of 1988, four years after our marriage. The following summer, in 1989, we moved to Nancy, in Lorraine, about 300 km east of Paris. There we quickly became part of the Nancy 31 Team, where we had the great joy of journeying for 27 years with the same spiritual counselor.

Our first two children, boys, were born in Paris, the following two, girl and boy, in Nancy.

Emmanuel and Géraldine, married for 10 years, have 3 children and live in Lyon, just like Elise, our daughter, and Grégoire married for 7 years, also 3 children. We are happy that they are assiduous in religious practice and that their children are baptized, and we often give thanks for this.

Gabriel is going to marry Yasmine, civilly in December 2025 and religiously in May 2026.

As for our son Pierre, he was ordained priest four years ago, within the Saint-Martin Community. He has just joined a Team and thinks we should all pray for priestly vocations during our team meetings! To welcome this vocation announced on the path to Santiago de Compostela, we were greatly helped by our spiritual accompaniers, two Clarisse religious sisters from the Branch of Sion 30 kilometers from Nancy.

We were quickly called to serve in Teams, and in 2012 we were invited to join the France–Luxembourg–Switzerland Responsible Team of Teams. This role meant caring for 20,000 team members and gathering one weekend each month. At that point, we felt the deep need for enduring personal spiritual accompaniment. This guidance allowed us to experience the marvelous complementarity of vocations and states of life (consecrated life/sacrament of marriage and celibacy/conjugal life).

As for our service within the International Responsible Team, we are both secretary and treasurer.

For legal reasons, the role of treasurer can only be held by one person, not a couple. Given his profession as a certified public accountant and auditor, Christophe serves as treasurer. He is responsible for the accounts and finances of both the Teams International Association and the Association of Friends of Father Caffarel, assisted by a certified public accountant. His responsibilities include establishing budgets, preparing accounts and financial reports, and implementing procedures to secure assets and manage expenditures. He also handles payments, fund requests to the Super Regions (SR) and Attached Regions (RR), and follow-up reminders. In addition, he oversees solidarity budgets for the SR and RR, reviews payroll for our two employees (a secretary and a part-time employee responsible for cleaning), and ensures their salaries are paid. He also manages the legal secretariat and ensures that bank assets are placed securely with modest returns.

The role of secretary is more easily shared, and Catherine contributes extensively, particularly with statistics, organization of ERI and College meetings, drafting minutes, and managing logistics. We work in close collaboration with our salaried secretary, Cécile, herself a team member, who puts a great deal of heart into her work—something we and many others greatly appreciate. Christophe works with her on accounting matters, and Catherine on secretarial ones, so we are in daily contact.

As members of the ERI, and drawing on our experiences—particularly Catherine’s work as a conjugal and family counselor—we have devoted much of this year to reflecting on the annual theme proposed by Mercedes and Alberto: “Love is much more than love.” We warmly recommend it to you.

You know everything about us… We are only humble servants… but we would be even less than that without the Lord who truly accompanies us every day of our life… and makes us rise up and grow in unsuspected ways…