On Thursday 29 August 2024, a remarkable bell was installed and baptised by Father Francis Marécaille, parish priest of Avranches, at the Priory of Saint Léonard in Vains, before a large gathering of villagers, parishioners and friends of the place. After serving aboard the French Navy ship Pluton, a mine-laying cruiser destroyed in an explosion on 13 September 1939, this anonymous bell was installed in a church in Rabat (Morocco) before being taken down in the 1960s. It then travelled aboard the training ship Jeanne d'Arc from Rabat to Brest, finally reaching Saint Léonard at Easter 1981, waiting for a new life.
After these secular and sacred journeys across seas and Muslim lands, Anne Julie Louise found her name and her vocation. She now rings the Angelus every day for pilgrims, fishermen, farmers and inhabitants. The more-than-millennial chapel of the priory thus recovers its voice — the spiritual call to prayer and the daily lulling of our lives.