justice orders the dismantling of a statue of the Virgin Mary on the island of Ré

The Administrative Court of Appeal of Bordeaux ordered the municipality of La Flotte-en-Ré, on the Ile de Ré, the removal from the public domain of a statue of the Virgin located in the middle of a crossroads, in under the law of separation of Church and State of 1905, we learned on Friday January 13.

Confirming a first decision of the administrative court of Poitiers, last March, it also ordered this town of Charente-Maritime of 2,800 inhabitants to “carry out its removal within six months”, in a press release.

This statue of discord, which bears the words “war vows”, was made after the Second World War for a family grateful to see a father and son return alive from the conflict. First exhibited in a private garden, it was then donated to the municipality, which installed it in 1983 at a crossroads.

Statue damaged in 2020

But in the spring of 2020, the statue was damaged after being hit by a motorist. The municipality then decided to rebuild it identically, in the same location, on a promontory.

Following this decision, Libre Pensée 17, an association for the defense of secularism, had taken legal action to claim this withdrawal, invoking the law of 1905 which prohibits the installation of monuments of a religious nature on the public domain.

“Ridiculous controversy”

A “ridiculous controversy”, had swept the mayor Jean-Paul Héraudeau who argued that the building was “part of the historical heritage” of the town, being “more of a memorial than a religious statue”.

“The court notes (…) that the municipality had no intention of expressing a religious preference by installing it there in 2020 (…) However, it also notes that the figure of the Virgin Mary is an important character in the Christian religion, in particular Catholic, and that the statue itself presents a religious character”, points out the administrative court of Bordeaux.

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