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Between 1950 and 1955, Catholic novelists fostered a new hero, the worker-priest, who embodied Catholic apostolic and theological effervescence in a France that had become a country of missions. An improvised mass on the kitchen table symbolized the new sacerdotal ideal of the evangelical presence in the world. To acquire literary recognition, the novels went beyond the purely apostolic whose legitimacy depended on the ecclesiastical institution and attested to the hopes for a renewal of Catholicism at the end of the war. The mixture of fiction and reality that gave the illusion of being real stories told in novels ensured their success. The new novels were based on apostolic manifestations and surveys that brought to light a world of misery without God at the outskirts of the cities.