The mayor of Beziers, Robert Ménard, took part in a procession in the bullring, walking behind an effigy of the Virgin Mary.

France has strict laws on the separation of church and state.

But Mr Ménard dismissed what he deemed France's "ayatollahs of secularism", and said he was not stigmatising any other religion.

"No other mayor in France would imagine doing this," Mr Ménard told the Guardian, speaking of his idea for the Mass.

It was, he said, about reaffirming France's Christian roots.

The French League of Human Rights last year lost a court battle to stop him installing a large Christmas nativity scene in the town hall.

Mr Menard has armed local police with handguns, banned public spitting, imposed an 11pm curfew on minors and banned people from hanging washing from balconies in the city centre.

Left wing opponents have accused him of turning the poverty-stricken Mediterranean city into a "laboratory of the far right".

He doesn't like the term "extreme right", preferring to talk of a rise in nationalist and patriotic feeling in a French electorate disgusted with traditional parties.

Mr Ménard is backed by the far right Front National, but he has stayed outside the party so he can speak independently.

His view is that immigration is France's real problem. "Our immigration has to stop," he said.

Meanwhile, the invitation to Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, a Front National politician, to address a Catholic conference in southern Var region last weekend sparked protest.

Some French Catholics believe the policies of her anti-Europe and anti-immigration party are incompatible with Christian values, despite the FN's recent attempts to move away from its racist and anti-Semitic past.

But Bishop Dominique Rey insisted the FN, "whether you like them or not are part of the French political landscape, especially in the south of France".

"It doesn't mean we are condoning the FN . . . this is an opportunity to challenge the FN on its immigration policies," the bishop said.

Sources

• The Guardian
• France 24
• Image: Feransa.com

"This is a continuing commitment on the part of Government in recognition of the contribution by the churches and private schools to the education of the country," the Prime Minister told the representatives of church and private school operators.

The funds distribution has been moved to the first half of the year given the suggestions by some schools that the money is needed at the start of the school year.

The allocation of the funds to schools is based on the number of students each school has.

The Government financial support started with $50,000 in 1984.

The major church denominations were amongst the pioneers to provide formal education before the establishment of the government education system.

Source

• Talamua
• Image: CaritasAotearoaNewZealand

The one constant between then and now is a state hostile to free minds and free speech.

The prosecution of the singers from the all-female band Pussy Riot represents a new low in political repression in post-Soviet Russia. But it is also a cautionary tale about the entanglement of church and state.

On Feb. 21, in the midst of Vladimir Putin's campaign to reclaim the presidency, Pussy Riot brought its guerrilla theater to Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Savior. Wearing their trademark colorful short dresses and balaclavas, the young women ran out in front of the altar and began a song-and-dance act which opened with a "punk prayer chant": "Mother of God, Blessed Virgin, deliver us from Putin." Subsequent lyrics — only a small portion of which was audible before the group was hustled away — denounced the close ties between the church and the regime ("the head of the KGB is their patron saint").

Maria Alekhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Yekaterina Samutsevich were charged with "hate-motivated hooliganism" and held without bail, even though two of them have small children. The charge carries penalties of two to seven years' imprisonment; the prosecution is asking for three. There is no jury, and the judge has shown blatant bias against the defense throughout the trial, which wrapped up Wednesday. The verdict is due next week.

This case is clearly political, and is part of a larger crackdown on discontent. Yet it is also no accident that the group's performance in the cathedral — and not, say, an earlier protest in which they sang a vulgarity-laced anti-Putin song on Red Square — was singled out. Turning dissent into sacrilege, the indictment accused the women of malicious intent to "demean the feelings and beliefs" of Orthodox Christians; in his closing argument, the prosecutor asserted that their lyrics "blasphemed against God." Continue reading