Guillaume Warmuz reads Ezekiel before pape Léon XIV at Stade Louis-II | OneFootball

Guillaume Warmuz, 55, the former Lens and Monaco goalkeeper turned chaplain, read from the Book of Ezekiel before pape Léon XIV at Stade Louis-II during a public mass attended by around 15,000 on Saturday.

The pontiff made an official visit to Monaco, the first in nearly 500 years, and was received by Prince Albert II and Princess Charlène at the Prince’s Palace, where he spoke in French about the microstate’s financial and spiritual reality.

Before taking a helicopter back to the Vatican, he stopped at Louis-II to celebrate mass. Warmuz retired in 2007 after leaving Monaco, then returned in this unexpected setting. The ex-RC Lens stalwart, who also had spells at Arsenal and Dortmund and played for Monaco from 2005 to 2007, now serves as a chaplain in Saône-et-Loire, a role he has held since 2010.

“My relationship with faith opened at that moment. I was doing rehab in Saint-Jean-de-Monts in Vendée and I was very afraid, afraid I would not be able to play again. I started to pray and went to the village church, alone, asking God to help me because I felt I would not make it,” he told Ouest-France in late 2023.

“It is just a kid crying, quite simply. I clung to prayer. In the end the operation went well and, little by little, things came back. It still took a year to heal fully, it is long, very long, but I found new strength in prayer.”

He says he now takes pride in sharing his faith.

Source: L'Équipe