Civitas is accused of calling to “go to war against the Republic”, including by resorting to “force”. In response, the Council of Ministers recorded the dissolution of the fundamentalist Catholic movement, government spokesperson Olivier Véran announced this Wednesday.
“Civitas considers human rights as tools for the destruction of Christian civilization, Civitas has organized rallies in homage to emblematic figures of collaboration, Civitas ensures the promotion of a hierarchy between French citizens with clearly anti-Semitic and Islamophobic theses », listed the minister during his report to the Council of Ministers, also criticizing his vision of LGBT+ as “a harmful community”.
A profoundly anti-Semitic statement
This dissolution of the fundamentalist Catholic organization, very present on social networks and whose ideology close to the extreme right sometimes flirts with conspiracy theory, was proposed and defended by the Minister of the Interior Gérald Darmanin. Founded in 1999, the “Civitas Institute” is part of a traditionalist lineage, close to the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X (founded by the French bishop Marcel Lefebvre).
The movement emerged from the shadows in 2011 with spectacular actions against several cultural events, notably the play Golgotha Picnic by Rodrigo Garcia, which it considered “Christianophobic”. In 2012 Civitas actively mobilized against marriage for all, denouncing “homofolie”. In 2021 the movement takes part in demonstrations against the health pass. But it was anti-Semitism which marked his last feat of arms and provoked the launch of the dissolution procedure, when the controversial essayist Pierre Hillard suggested returning to “the situation before 1789” when a Jew “could not become French”.