French nuns and climate activists face off over plans for a megachurch

When climate activists protesting the construction of a huge church complex in a natural park in southern France climbed the construction site, the nuns gave chase.

One sister grabbed an environmental activist who was climbing onto a backhoe, but lost her grip and fell into a hole. Two other nuns tried to stop a protester, but he shook loose. Sister Benoîte ran and tackled a running activist – pushing him into a ditch.

“They lost,” said Sister Gaetane, who also arrested a protester. “We tried not to cause any injuries.”

The October clashes were a significant escalation of a longstanding hostility between environmentalists and the Missionary Family of Our Lady, a Roman Catholic order that wants to build a majestic new religious center in a verdant valley of the pristine Ardèche mountains.

The order, part of a Catholic community of about 150 people that also includes nuns and brothers and has its headquarters in the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Colombier, plans to build the new site over more than seven years to welcome what there is. is a growing number of pilgrims visiting the village to worship at the statue of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of the Snows.

In the Bourges River, two pillars have already been erected as a footbridge between the trout swimming past. The project also includes pilgrim dining halls and a church: a cream-colored behemoth of more than 26,000 square feet with pointed spiers and dozens of stained glass windows.

The nuns and brothers say the church, paid for by donations from pilgrims and other believers, will bring new prestige to the area. They are excited that churches are still being built in France, a country where the number of practicing Catholics has steadily declined.

Their opponents, said Brother Clement-Marie, a member of the order, use “ecology as an excuse” because they are fundamentally “anti-Catholic.”

But what the local religious group says is a project of “God’s grace.” According to environmentalists, it is a polluting eyesore in a region full of rocky slopes, chestnut trees and industrious hikers.

The Catholic hierarchy itself has also partly opposed the great project. A former local archbishop, Jean-Louis Balsa, said in 2020 that the ecclesiastical part of the complex was “disproportionate” and should not be built. The local order unsuccessfully appealed the decision to the Vatican and had to halt construction of the chapel, concentrating on the other buildings for the time being.

But Brother Clement-Marie remained hopeful that the entire project would be greenlit in the future. Perhaps, he said, the number of pilgrims would grow so much that they would have to build the megachurch “for security reasons.”

About 2,000 pilgrims visit the site once a year, in December, to pray and ask for mercy at a statue of Our Lady of the Snows. It was built to fulfill a promise made in 1944 by local believers who asked the Virgin Mary to protect the village from German forces during World War II.

The worshipers now pray to her to help them defeat another enemy – one that carries not guns, but banners that read: ‘No concrete.’

The environmentalists have spent years organizing protests or gathering for Sunday Masses, mounting multiple legal challenges that have succeeded in delaying the project but never killing it.

They allege that regulatory approvals for the church project were flawed and that the religious order cheated on an authorization form. When asked whether the building would be located in a nature park, the decision stated ‘no’.

“They are kidnapping the landscape,” activist Martine Maurice said in a telephone interview.

Brother Clement-Marie said it was an honest mistake on the form. “In France we do that for the administration, so much paperwork,” he said, adding that in a file with dozens of pages it is difficult not to make a single mistake.”

Lately, activists have pinned their hopes of stopping the project on the discovery of a protected plant, the réséda de Jacquin, at the construction site.

“The réséda de Jacquin has the power to stop the works,” said Pierrot Pantel, an ecological engineer and member of the National Biodiversity Association. “To tear down the basilica.”

On October 12, the activists chained themselves to the excavators deployed on the site to prevent them from tearing up the white-flowered plant.

“Block the machines,” said Mrs. Maurice. “Protect the plant.”

But on the second day of their occupation, the activists were confronted by a phalanx of nuns and brothers who tried to protect the excavators. The physical clashes – in which a brother sprained his ankle and an activist broke a finger – were followed by an hours-long standoff in which the nuns sang “Ave Maria” to the demonstrators, who sat on the machines.

At the end of the day, the activists went home, but they vowed to continue trying to block the project. “Our most important way to respond,” said Brother Clément-Marie, “is prayer.”