 Weil participated in the 1936 Paris factory occupations and, moreover, planned on returning to factory work. Her trajectory shifted, however, with the advent of the Spanish Civil War. On the level of geopolitics, she was critical of both civil and international war, and she approved of France’s decision not to intervene on the Republican side. On the level of individual commitment, however, she obtained journalist’s credentials and joined an international anarchist brigade. On 20 August, 1936, Weil, clumsy and nearsighted, stepped in a pot of boiling oil, severely burning her lower left leg and instep. Only her parents could persuade her not to return to combat. By late 1936 Weil wrote against French colonization of Indochina, and by early 1937 she argued against French claims to Morocco and Tunisia. In April 1937 she travelled to Italy. Within the basilica Santa Maria degli Angeli, inside the small twelfth-century Romanesque chapel where St. Francis prayed, Weil had her second significant contact with Christianity. As she would later describe in a letter, “[S]omething stronger than I compelled me for the first time to go down on my knees” (WFG 26).