2023-08-08 15:24:39
Civitas demonstrators pray on their knees before taking part in a demonstration against the creation of a reception center for migrants, in Saint-Brevin-les Pins (Loire-Atlantique), February 25, 2023. SEBASTIEN SALOM-GOMIS / AFP
After the Islamist associations, after the ultra-right movements and then those of the ultra-left, it is the turn of the fundamentalist Catholics to be targeted by Gérald Darmanin. The Minister of the Interior announced on Monday August 7 that he had asked his services to investigate a file for the dissolution of Civitas, a traditionalist Catholic association founded in 1999 and transformed into a political party in 2016 and then into an institute. The procedure, the first aimed at this politico-religious current, should take several weeks, even several months, according to a source place Beauvau.
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At the origin of this announcement, yet another scandal caused by the remarks – described as“ignominious” by the Minister of the Interior − by Pierre Hillard, conspiratorial and anti-Semitic essayist, held during the recent Civitas summer school, from July 29 to 31 in Mayenne. Mr. Hillard advocated returning to the“before the naturalization of the Jews in 1791” because this would have « [ouvert] the door to immigration ». He pronounced himself, moreover, for the fact of redoing Catholicism “state religion”. Mr. Darmanin seized the public prosecutor qualifying the remarks made as“incitement to racial hatred”.
This provocation is added to an already well-filled catalog. “It has been several months since the legal services of the ministry have been compiling the data and listing the actions of this party.we explain to the Ministry of the Interior. And the case was starting to get really heavy. » Civitas has been known to disrupt plays and attack judged works of art. « christianophobes » : this year, its militants prevented two concerts in churches, including one, in April, of the singer Bilal Hassani, planned in a place of worship yet desacralized in Metz.
Excluded from the Manif for all
Excluded from the Manif pour tous movement for its extremism, the Civitas institute had campaigned against same-sex marriage and then for the annulment of those pronounced. In the 2017 legislative elections, the party presents fourteen candidates, none of whom will reach the second round. Same failure in the municipal elections of 2020, where the fundamentalist movement had joined forces with the Ligue du Midi and French Dissidence, two far-right groups. The only elected municipal official in Civitas, in Fontaine (Isère), was sentenced for anti-Roma remarks. In February, the president of the Civitas institute, Alain Escada, called on supporters to meet in Saint-Brevin-les-Pins (Loire-Atlantique) to demonstrate against the project for a reception center for asylum seekers. Yannick Morez, the mayor of the commune, resigned on May 10 because of the threats he received and the arson of his home.
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