And rounding out our trio of good-news stories, Hélène de Lauzun reports in The European Conservative that, by one measure at least, Christian religiosity is flourishing. Several recent pilgrimages in France were packed with participants, including the Notre-Dame de Chrétienté journey from Paris to Chartres Cathedral, which drew more than 20,000. De Lauzun was especially struck at how the events moved complete strangers to come to one other’s aid to overcome hunger, thirst or exhaustion.

The Frigid Isle
Íris Erlingsdóttir shines a light on the world’s first wholly feminized state. Women, she writes in The European Conservative, run everything in Iceland: “the presidency, the prime minister’s office…[the] national state church…schools, municipalities, police…newsrooms and [the] ever-expanding public bureaucracy.” As for the men, Erlingsdóttir observes, they describe themselves ruefully as (bad-taste alert) “pussy-whipped.”


