In past centuries, France sent out more missionaries than any other country to spread Christianity in Africa.

Now African missionaries are coming to baptize Europeans.

Before, it was our priests who went to Africa. Now it's the turn of African priests to come here.

They're needed because France is facing a priest shortage of dramatic proportions. For every 10 priests

had in the year 2000, it now has only three.

Two bishops told me that without the Africans, the church in France would collapse.

I'm John Lawrenson, and you're listening to the documentary on the BBC World Service.

On this week's Heart and Soul, which explores personal approaches to faith,

I've come to Alsace in the east of France to meet one of the two and a half thousand African priests in this country. They've been sent as

missionaries by bishops back home in countries like Senegal, Ivory Coast, Gabon, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso,

to help keep Europe's Christian communities alive.

Father Michel Mukendi at the wheel of his small car singing a hymn from the Congo as we zip through the Alsatian countryside.

The villages we pass are called things like Reinhardtmuster and Dimstahl because for much of its history, Alsace was German.

Father Michel is the parish priest of Marmoutier, a small town not far from the city of Strasbourg.

But that's not all. He spends quite a lot of his time criss-crossing these rolling green hills in his car.

Because there's such a shortage of priests, his flock is spread over 11 villages with 12 churches.

I am Father Michel Mukendi Mbaibu.

I was born in Colerese in the southeast of the Democratic Republic

of Congo and grew up in the capital, Kinshasa, a city of 17 million people. I was brought up

in a very, very Christian family. My father went to Mass at six every morning before going to work,

and he took me along too.

But that's what it was like in our household.

...