"The generation of people who were 20 years old at the time of the [Second Vatican] Council tended more towards 'burying one's faith,' as they used to say at the time. This is no longer the case: young priests are more willing to wear the cassock and young lay people assume their Catholic identity more easily."
De Thieulloy noted that Protège ton église had not received much mainstream media coverage in France. He said the group was more likely to reach supporters through appearances on the web television platform TV Libertés or on the website of l'Observatoire de la christianophobie, rather than through interviews on a French public national television channel.
Protège ton église welcomes new members, but encourages those who are unable to attend vigils to join in through prayer.
"We ask Catholics to pray for us," Gauthier said in the 2019 interview, "for our action, for our movement, for all our watchers, but also for all those who are the source of vandalism or desecration because, as Our Lord Jesus Christ said to his Divine Father: 'They know not what they do.'"
"We must pray for their souls and their conversion. And we must pray more for France by asking St. Louis and St. Joan of Arc to intercede for it."
The organization has a patron saint: Blessed Noël Pinot, who was arrested while celebrating a clandestine Mass in 1794, following the French Revolution. When he was guillotined, he was wearing the vestments he wore at the Mass. Eyewitnesses said that while waiting to ascend the steps, he recited the opening words from the Mass, "Introibo ad altare Dei" (I will go unto the altar of God).
A seminarian who has taken part in Protège ton église vigils composed a prayer in honor of the Blessed.
It reads: "God, our Father, You who have crowned Blessed Noël Pinot with the laurels of martyrdom, we pray to you: Give us the grace to respond every day and until our death to the call you have made to us to protect your Church. Through his intercession, inspire us with the right words and actions."
"Enlighten and strengthen us, make us, like our patron saint, invincible in the defense of the Church and the propagation of the faith. Deign to grant your forgiveness to those who, ignorant of you, hate you and attack your Bride."
"God, our Father, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, we ask you to hasten the day where the Church will proclaim the holiness of her life. 'Lord who has given your life for me, may I gladly give you mine.'"