Saturday 15 October 2022, at 8 pm, St Paul's Anglican Church
Friday 29 April 2022, at 7 pm Eglise St-Paul's Church
Friday 26 November 2021, at 8 pm Eglise St-Paul's Church
Thursday 26 August 2021, at 8.30 pm Eglise St-Paul's Church
Thursday 17 June 2021, at 6.30 pm Eglise St-Paul's Church
English speaking tourism was an established feature of life on the Côte d’Azur and in Monaco a hundred and fifty years ago. Some visitors settled permanently, and in so doing, moved beyond the temporary provision of worship centres for visitors in hotels, to the building of their own churches.
A first initiative was made in Monaco in 1869, by a Mr. de Mello to erect a ‘Protestant Temple Church’ but it did not succeed. In 1888, Mr. Edward Smith, Monaco Banker, British Vice-Consul and devout churchman, bought a plot of land and erected a wooden church in the neighbouring French commune of Beausoleil. This was known as the Église Anglo-Americaine.
Bishop Sandford, Church of England Bishop in Gibraltar at that time, and responsible for chaplaincies in southern Europe, did not approve of the initiative. Unlike France, where church and state are separate, the Roman Catholic Church in Monaco is the Established Church of the Principality. Introducing a chapel of the English Established Church was a diplomatic issue. The Anglophone expatriate community however, embraced then, as now, several nationalities, and denominations. Confident in his mission, Smith went ahead and appointed a pastor without episcopal authorisation.