Poland and France at odds as court orders removal of Pope’s cross

A DIPLOMATIC spat has erupted between France and Poland after a court ordered the removal of a cross from a statue of the late Pope John Paul II in a Brittany town because it breached rules on secularism. Poland pledged to save the work from the “dictates of political correctness” by having it shipped to the late pontiff ’s native country.

Gifted in 2006 to the mayor of Ploërmel, western France, the 24ft (7.5m) statue depicts John Paul II in prayer, standing beneath an arch adorned with a large cross.

However, after a decade-long battle, the Conseil d’état, France’s top administrative court, has ruled that the cross must be removed from the public space as it violates a 1905 law imposing the strict separation of Church and State.

It said that while the Pope and the arch can remain, the cross must be removed and it has given the town six months to do so. Upon learning of its fate, Beata Szydło, the prime minister of Poland where John Paul II is revered, offered to give the statue a new home to “save it from censorship”.

“Our great Pole, a great European, is a symbol of a Christian, united Europe,” she said.

“The dictates of political correctness” and “secularisation of the state” were, she warned, promoting “values which are alien to our culture, which leads to terrorising Europeans in their everyday life”.

The statue, by Russian artist Zourab Tsereteli, had been controversial from the outset, with a group of locals and the secularist National Federation of Free Thought campaigning to have it removed. The Catholic Church called the ruling “balanced” while France’s secularism watchdog, ODL, said it simply upheld the 1905 law.

Patrick Le Diffon, Ploërmel’s embattled mayor, has come up with a compromise. He intends to sell the land to a private investor thus circumventing the problem.