94 percent of the residents voted in favor of keeping the statue in its place, in the square in front of the church also named after St. Michael, but in the end those who believe that a work of art with religious content has no place in public space won. The fact that the final decision to remove the statue was announced just before one of the most important Christian holidays, on Good Friday, is just icing on the cake.
According to the decision of the French Court of Appeal, the work depicting St. Michael violates the law on the separation of church and state, so it must be removed from its current location, since it is on public land. They are doing all this despite the fact that according to a 2022 vote, almost the entire population is against moving the statue. This was not the first such case in France, at the beginning of the year a statue of the Virgin Mary also fell victim to the woke ideology.
The court of appeals has put an end to the legal battle that has been going on for years, because according to its decision, the statue of St. Michael standing on public land in the village of Sables-d'Olonne in the Vendée county in the western part of France must be removed, reports V4na.com .
The mayor of the settlement, Yannick Moreau, issued a statement about what happened, who wrote that
the storm of woke ideology and cancel culture also reached Sables-d'Olonne after the Council of State rejected the city's appeal regarding the removal of the statue and ordered the permanent removal of the artwork from its current location. According to the justification, this is necessary because of secularism, i.e. the law on the separation of state and church, since the statue of the archangel stands on public land.
The announcement reveals that the statue's ordeal began years ago, in 2019, when some people with secular ideals cited the city's leadership to court, demanding that it remove the statue of St. Michael, which is the symbol of the district named after him. The France Bleu reported that the statue has been standing in public space since 2018, in the square in front of the church also named after the archangel.
In December 2021, the Nantes administrative court ruled in favor of the Libre Pensée (free thinking) association that had initiated the legal process and ordered the removal of the statue from public space, but mayor Yannick Moreau appealed against the verdict.
After that, the management of the settlement held a vote in 2022 so that the population could also express their opinion regarding the removal of the statue, and it turned out that the residents had a unanimous opinion on the matter, as 94 percent voted for the statue to remain in place, the In the square in front of the church named after Saint Michael.
However, the settlement's management's appeal was rejected by the Council of State, so the appeals court confirmed that the statue must be removed from the square in front of the church, as the placement of a religiously charged work of art in public space violates the provisions of the law on secularism, which orders the separation of state and religion.
According to the mayor of the settlement, it is unbelievable that the highest administrative court in France does not consider the statue as part of the city's cultural heritage, while the settlement's coat of arms includes the patron saint of sailors and fishermen, St. Michael. The icing on the cake is the date of the State Council's decision, their final decision ordering the removal of the statue was announced just before one of the most important Christian holidays, on Good Friday.
According to Yannick Moreau, what happened was nothing more than a storm of a new order, a woke ideology, which fell mercilessly on an innocent statue. In his statement, the city manager emphasizes that as mayor he does not challenge the final decision made by the Supreme Administrative Court, but as a committed elected politician he is shocked by the verdict and is completely outraged by it, as he considered such a decision impossible until now.
The city manager stressed that although the republic holds secular views, France is still Christian and refuses to submit to the woke inquisition. Yannick Moreau emphasized that they comply with the court decision and remove the statue from the square in front of the church, but their hearts will never be taken over by the woke ideology and its followers.
This was not the first such case in France, V4NA previously reported that in January, hundreds of people protested on the island of Île de Ré in the western part of France against the removal of a statue of the Virgin Mary standing in a public area. Even then, the above-mentioned Libre Pensée association was in the background, they initiated the legal process, as they did not like the fact that the statue was in public space, violating the principle of secularism.
Regarding what happened, the editor-in-chief of the French conservative newspaper Valeurs actuelles, Geoffroy Lejeune, said that what is happening is an ideological fight by fanatics, a hysterical extremist minority offensive, with which they attack French civilization.
It is important to note that the association called Libre Pensée
however, not all religious symbols are against it, as they stand in favor of wearing the Muslim headscarf.
a on their website several years ago, they are advocating that according to the French education law, the privilege of universities must be respected, according to which the police cannot interfere in the affairs of the institution without the consent of the management. According to the association's point of view, it is not possible to ban the wearing of the above-mentioned Muslim religious symbol in public education, because that would violate the basic freedom of the students.
Photo: AFP
