What is this confusion around the film “Sacred Heart”, deprogramming then reprogramming?

Court – The broadcast of “Sacré-coeur”, a docu-fiction in the form of an ode to the Christian faith and the figure of Christ, had been canceled from the municipal cinema on the grounds that it was an attack on secularism

A decision taken in the name of secularism by Mayor Benoît Payan, a right-wing opposition which cries scandal, and the courts which ultimately decide: The administrative court of Marseille on Saturday ordered the city’s municipality to reprogram in a municipal cinema the religious film “Sacré-coeur” whose broadcast it had canceled, considering that it was an attack on secularism.

This feature film, a docu-fiction in the form of an ode to the Christian faith and the figure of Christ, was released at the beginning of October, attracting almost 200,000 spectators.

The court seized for interim relief

On Wednesday, shortly before its planned screening at the Château de la Buzine, an establishment managed under municipal management by the city of Marseille, the town hall led by a left-civil society coalition decided to cancel its broadcast by invoking the law of separation of Churches and State of 1905.

The decision had been widely criticized, particularly on the right, and far-right senator Stéphane Ravier and the film’s director couple Sabrina and Steven J. Gunnell had taken legal action via a summary liberty procedure (emergency procedure), denouncing “censorship”.

The judge ruled in their favor in a six-page order, recalling that in addition to the Château de la Buzine, where the film was scheduled for Wednesday but also October 25 and 28, it is only broadcast daily in a cinema in Marseille. By “thus restricting its diffusion”, this deprogramming would have “(…)

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