Procession of the Saint-Roch Church in Montpellier (screenshot of a video published in 2015 on the youtube channel of the city of Montpellier)
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For many years, the Montpellier circle of the association Free Thought, which fights for the respect of secularism as defined by the law of 1905, is in fight against a municipal subsidy allocated to the Saint-Roch Church. Its activists finally won their case.
” At last ! It took 26 years for secularism to finally take its place in Montpellier ” rejoiced Free Thought in a press release dated August 17, before continuing: “Indeed, this year, the Saint-Roch festivals were able to be held while respecting the law of 1905:
– The association that bears the name has established a program in which there is no mention of masses and processions, content to offer strolls and concerts; the 7,000 euros of public money were therefore not intended, to our knowledge, to invite the population to religious services alongside the town hall and the diocese unlike in other years;
– For its part, the Catholic Church has made its own program, religious, but independent, and, one can suppose it, without the least public money;
– The town hall, for its part, has not affixed its logo to any invitation; to our knowledge, the mayor as such did not go to mass in honor of Saint Roch; the town hall has not even announced the 2021 edition on its website.
Thus, what is religious has been organized privately by religious institutions; and what is part of local folklore, without direct religious connotation, was done by the association collecting public funds. The town hall kept away from the religious. We are here in the context of separation, not confusion.
Since 2015, the group of universities has been calling for a return to such a separation. We won our case, so we can be happy with the outcome. “
The case has been running since the term of office of Philippe Saurel (2014-2020), and continued with his successor Michaël Delafosse. In early summer 2017, Free Thought, founded in 1890, already alerted the prefecture by mail about “Doubts about the legality of the subsidy granted by the Montpellier town hall to the international association Saint-Roch”.
Founded in 1995, the Saint-Roch association “Is open to all those concerned by the Saint-Roch of Montpellier [pèlerin dont l’existence a été remise en question], whatever their motivation: for his Gospel message, the example he is for contemporary man, the place he occupied in the Middle Ages, the one he occupies today as patron saint of pilgrims’ can we read on the association’s website. She is also at the origin of the organization of the feast of Saint Roch, whose program revolves around masses, processions and the promotion of “religious tourism”. La Libre Pensée then recalled article 2 of the law of 1905: “The Republic does not recognize, pay or subsidize any religion”. Saurel had been intractable, but Delafosse, whose ultra-right-wing vision of secularism remains worrying, gave way. Of which act.
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