WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, UCL AL #337 - Ecology, Monts d'Ardèche: Against sectarian aberrations and the ubiquitous basilica (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 To fight against the project of an ubiquitous basilica in the heart of the

Ardèche, led by a sectarian community, the Ami.es de la Bourges collective is
mobilizing. The ambivalence of public authorities poses a problem at a time when
environmental impact studies are multiplying. ---- The Missionary Family of Notre
Dame is a Catholic community, with approximately one hundred and fifty members,
based in Saint-Pierre-de-Colombier in Ardèche. It is monitored by the Miviludes
(interministerial mission for vigilance and the fight against sectarian
aberrations) which writes in 2021 that it has "serious concerns" about it. In
2018, she obtained a building permit for, among other things, a basilica, a car
park and housing.
The basilica in question would have a capacity of 3,500 people, and a floor area
of 7,000 square meters. It would also include a chapel almost 50 meters high.
Proportions that seem disproportionate for this village of 400 inhabitants.

The file for this project is then validated by the Regional Department for the
Environment, Planning and Housing (Dreal). However, it is inside the regional
natural park (PNR) of the Ardèche mountains, where species with high conservation
issues live and pass through, as the brief environmental study carried out then
underlines.

Photo: Non à la basilica collective
Three days of ZAD in June 2020
In 2020, after the start of the works, there followed a strong mobilization, in
particular of the collective Les Ami.es de la Bourges (named after the Bourges
valley). Demonstrations are organized, legal actions, and even a Zad, which only
lasted from June 13 to 15, 2020 before being cleared by force. Finally, in
October, the prefect recognizes an "administrative error", and a prefectural
decree requests the suspension of the work pending a new, more complete
environmental study.

It was in November 2022 that the situation changed again. A new prefectural
decree is pronounced which repeals the previous one, and work resumes. Indeed,
the new environmental study has arrived and considers that the impact of the
project on protected species would be minor provided that certain avoidance
measures are implemented : restoration of the banks, cutting of vegetation
outside the periods nesting, etc.

However, there are several criticisms to be made about this study. The first, and
not least, is that it was very difficult for opponents of the project to gain
access to it. It was only made public in the second half of January 2023, while
it was only possible to challenge the decree until the end of the same month. "We
will only have a few days to analyze hundreds of pages that the administration
took a year and a half to validate. declared, in Reporterre, Pierrot Pantel,
ecological engineer at the National Association for Biodiversity (ANB). Some
opponents of the basilica see in this delay a deliberate desire by the state to
reduce their means of action.

When, finally, the collective was able to read the study, it seemed biased in
favor of the resumption of work. "Between the first and the last version of the
study, the final impacts of the project went from "low" to "negligible" for
several species of butterflies, bats or birds, even though the measures
recommended for avoiding these impacts are fundamentally the same," says Pierrot
Pantel again, this time in Le Monde.

The basilica in question would have a capacity of 3,500 people and a floor area
of 7,000 square meters.
Photo: Non à la basilica collective
The Monts d'Ardèche PNR, for its part, regrets not having been consulted from the
start of the project, as it should have been according to the park's charter,
signed by the State and by the municipality. of Saint-Pierre-de-Colombier. The
prefecture had also not informed the PNR of the resumption of work. Its president
Dominique Allix denounces this lack of consultation and also claims to find
methodological biases in the study. "No consultation upstream, lack of
integration of landscape aspects, impacts on biodiversity, artificialization of
the soil... Not to mention living together" he laments in Le Monde.

In February 2023, the collective therefore decided to seize the administrative
court to request a new suspension of the work, but the judge in chambers rejected
their request.

Two local CGT unions participate in the collective
Far from being discouraged, the Ami.es de la Bourges collective is preparing the
next stage of the fight. A day of mobilization is scheduled for April 8 at the
call of some thirty organizations, unions and political parties opposed to the
project. At the same time, other legal actions have already been taken to obtain
the cancellation of the building permit.

Demonstrations are organized, legal actions, and even a ZAD which only lasted
from June 13 to 15, 2020 before being cleared by force.
Photo: Non à la basilica collective
It should also be noted that the Bishop of Vivier had already banned the
construction of this basilica in 2020 because of its "excessive appearance", and
that the Vatican later confirmed this decree. So the project could also be
abandoned for internal Church reasons, although this is less likely.

In addition, many local elected officials support the mobilization, and make
motions on this subject in their municipalities. MPs have also hinted at the
possibility of opening a parliamentary inquiry.

Door-to-door work, discussions and meetings
What makes the specificity of this struggle is, among other things, the diversity
of its actors. Among the supporters of the mobilization, we find associations
such as La Libre Pensée which devote themselves to anti-dogmatism and
anticlericalism, others rather specialized in the defense of the environment,
political parties, anarchist organizations or even trade unions (two CGT
departmental unions, Ardèche and Drôme, support the mobilization, which once
again makes a link between ecology and the world of work), which manage to work
together in good intelligence, with large unitary meetings and democratic
functioning. The means of action deployed range from legal recourse to the
occupation of the premises, through demonstrations and rallies.

All this is accompanied by real work on the ground, which means that by dint of
discussion campaigns, door-to-door meetings, almost the entire population is
positioning itself against the basilica.

Let's hope that this beautiful dynamic bears fruit, and that the mobilization
ends up making the prefecture bend.

Fabrice (UCL Bordeaux)

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Monts-d-Ardeche-Contre-les-derives-sectaires-et-la-basilique-ubuesque
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