A French court has ordered a small town to remove a statue of the Virgin Mary, saying the religious display violates the separation of church and state. The statue is located at a crossroads in La Flotte, a municipality of 2,800 inhabitants on the popular holiday island Ile-de-Re, off France’s Atlantic coast.
The statue was erected by a local family after World War II in gratitude for a father and son having returned from the conflict alive.
Its initial home was a private garden, but the family later donated it to the town which set it up at the crossroads in 1983.
In 2020, it was damaged by a passing car, and the local authorities decided to restore the statue and put it back in the same place, but this time on an elevated platform.
That move triggered a legal complaint by La Libre Pensee 17, an association dedicated to the defence of secularity, on the basis that a French law dating back to 1905 forbids religious monuments in public spaces.
A court in Poitiers followed the argument as did, on appeal, the regional court in Bordeaux, ordering La Flotte to remove the statue, according to a press statement.
Credit: rfi
