More cheery news for the embattled Grande Loge Nationale Française this past week. Grand Lodges in New York, Poland, Bulgaria, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland have all withdrawn recognition of the GLNF in the wake of the recent reelection of Grand Master François Stifani.
The GLNF is quickly spiraling into a situation that will be hard to recover from, in terms of international recognition, as well as internal turmoil. Even if efforts to organize a new grand lodge in France succeed, recognition of a new GL takes lots of time, leaving one of Europe's most populous nations without regular, recognized Freemasonry for the short term future. This could be an opportunity for the Grande Loge de France (GLdF) to emerge as the lone regular Masonic grand lodge there, but no one seems to be making such a move just yet.
Time will tell. But in the short term, Stifani seems hell bent on allowing the GLNF to completely crumble under his leadership. That's a terrible situation for the brethren of France to find themselves in. What's amazing is that he can find anyone to follow him down that path.
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