This Friday, September 15, on the occasion of his trip to the Côte d’Or as part of Heritage Days, the Head of State should make announcements to come to the aid of religious buildings in municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants. The municipalities of Saint-Briac-sur-Mer and Plounevez-Lochrist would be affected.
The President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, will travel to Côte-d’Or, in Auxois, on the occasion of European Heritage Days. He will go to the collegiate church of Semur-en-Auxois and the castle of Bussy-Rabutin. This fortieth JEP edition will be an opportunity for the Head of State to announce a system which will support the preservation of religious heritage in municipalities with less than 10,000 inhabitants.
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Emmanuel Macron wants to reach out to the municipalities which have the heavy responsibility of maintaining religious buildings built before 1905. At least 5,000 churches are said to be very dilapidated in France, many of them in Brittany.
On June 5, during a trip to Mont-Saint-Michel for the celebration of the abbey’s millennium, Emmanuel Macron asked the Ministry of Culture and the Interior “measures to better help buildings in municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants in difficult financial situations, which are too often poorly listed today“.
According to our information, the church of Saint-Briac in Saint-Briac-sur-Mer (Ille-et-Vilaine) and the church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul in Plounevez-Lochrist (Finistère) should integrate this system.
News that delights Gildas Bernard, mayor of Plounevez-Lochrist. Reached by telephone, he told us that it was “clearly good news“. The town has just begun the third phase of renovation work on its church. This work involves the complete repair of the roof for a total cost of 1.5 million euros.
A significant cost that this municipality of 2,400 inhabitants must largely bear. “We are a municipality with an investment budget of between 1.2 and 1.5 million. This work represents 25% of our past investment capacity for 4 years“.
A heavy but assumed financial choice. “I had the support of the council because it was unimaginable that we would not take care of this heritage which is a central part of the municipality. Since 2021, for each of the budgets for these four financial years, we have included around 400,000 euros in each of these four budgets to cover bills and costs. It is heavy,” confides the chosen one.
This state aid would therefore be welcome and could allow the municipality to invest in other projects. “We have reduced our investments in other programs such as roads. It was necessary to prioritize.”
The Ministry of Culture was also commissioned last June to initiate a campaign to register or classify cultural buildings built in the 19th and 20th centuries as historic monuments.
Still according to our information, the Saint-André church in Val-Couesnon, in Ille-et-Vilaine, could be classified as a historic monument. This religious building represents a mixture of well-preserved Romanesque style and signs of the Breton Gothic style. The church has undergone modifications over the centuries, choir rebuilt in the 16th century, sacristy in the 18th century, bell tower with an imperial roof.
These announcements come in a back-to-school political context where the head of government seeks to seduce the right. Last February, 131 parliamentarians from the right and the center wrote an open letter to Emmanuel Macron, published by the JDD, in which they called for the defense of “our small rural churches” which according to them constitute “the soul of France”.
Announcements which also come one week before Pope Francis travels to Marseille. The Head of State will attend the giant mass celebrated by Pope Francis on Saturday September 23 at the Vélodrome stadium in Marseilleaccording to information from The cross confirmed by the Elysée this Thursday. Brigitte Macron will also be present.
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