French bishops have appealed for an end to violence after a weekend of rioting in which public buildings were burned, shops were looted nationwide, and a Lyon interreligious peace march was postponed.
“I call on everyone not to be swept up in the spiral of this violence: Our city and our country deserve better than this,” Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, archbishop of Marseille and president of the French bishops’ conference, said in an Oct. 18 communiqué.
In Marseille, he wrote, “shops were looted, churches broken into, the city hall invaded and damaged, a police station ransacked, and members of the police attacked.” The archdiocese has not said which churches were entered.
Archbishop Olivier de Germay of Lyon said in a statement on X that his city “was the scene of clashes, hatred, destruction, and looting that are unacceptable.”
“I am well aware that this violence is the sign of a society that is unwell, but I want to state forcefully once again that it is a dead end,” he wrote.
Organizers postponed a March for Peace that Lyonʼs Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders had planned for Sunday to mark the 40th anniversary of St. John Paul IIʼs 1986 interreligious day of prayer in Assisi, Italy.
No new date has been set.
What happened
The violence broke out Oct. 17 when about 550,000 people marched nationwide in what organizers called a protest against the rising cost of living, according to the Interior Ministry.
One labor union put the figure at 800,000, AFP reported.
The movement grew out of weeks of high school protests over school conditions, during which several schools were severely damaged by the demonstrators, including in Paris, Nantes, Marseille, and Rouen.
In Limoges on Saturday, masked mobs broke into the city hall and set it on fire. In Paris, AFP reporters saw groups of young men in balaclavas disconnect security cameras before smashing their way into shops. Paris looting continued Sunday night, Le Figaro reported.
Other public buildings were also attacked and torched. In Lyon, the tourist office on Place Bellecour was ransacked and set on fire. In Bordeaux, rioters ransacked the regional prefectʼs residence, and firefighters put out fires at the prefecture building, a bank, and shops, Sud Ouest reported.
Nearly 1,000 police officers and gendarmes were injured, the Interior Ministry said. Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin told France 2 on Monday that authorities took 2,331 people into custody over the weekend, 70% of them adults “very often known to the police and the justice system,” Le Figaro reported. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said about 350 people were arrested in Paris alone on Sunday and overnight.
Prosecutors in Toulouse and several other cities said most of the people they held had no previous criminal record.
Trump and Vance react
In reaction to the images of chaos, violence, and looting across France, President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance both pointed to immigration.
“Western liberals imported the third world into France,” Vance wrote on X.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday that “the immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country,” AFP reported.
Nuñez said rioters acted at the instigation of “the ultra-left” and were joined by “opportunistic delinquents,” Le Figaro reported. On Monday, he confirmed security forces had “lost control” at points during the violent riots.
On Monday, Macron refused Nuñezʼs resignation, offered the day before, and pointed to “failures of anticipation and intelligence,” Euronews reported. Darmanin said the authorities had “unquestionably failed.”
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