The monument has been installed since the fall of 2018 on the forecourt of the Saint-Michel church. the Nantes administrative court on Thursday ordered the town of Sables d’Olonne (Vendée) to remove a statue of Saint-Michel within six months, in order to comply with the law of 1905. The law of separation of churches and state “Is opposed to the installation (…) in public space, of a sign or an emblem expressing the recognition of a cult or indicating a religious preference”, recalls the judgment.
This decision follows a request from the Vendée federation of the Free Thought Association, which requested the removal of the statue from the public domain as a “manifest religious object”. The association had demanded the removal of the statue from the former Mayor of Sables d’OlonneAs soon as it is installed. She had turned to justice after having suffered a first refusal.
This judgment “confirms that we must respect the convictions of all citizens, and not satisfy a few,” said the president of Free Thought in Vendée, Jean Regourd, in a statement. “It is unacceptable that elected officials (…) still confuse commune and parish”, he added.
The town hall will appeal
The mayor of Sables d’Olonne, Yannick Moreau (ex-LR), has announced that he will appeal this decision. In a statement, he lambasted the “abusive demands of radical secularists complicit in” cancel culture “who seek to debunk one by one the millennial cultural attachments that have forged our collective identity”.
In 2018, the association of Free thought had obtained the removal to Ploërmel (Morbihan) of a statue of John Paul II, erected twelve years earlier in a public square, after a long procedure up to the Council of State.