Police have increased patrols in places of worship, but nothing works. On Monday morning, September 9, once again, overwhelmed parishioners went to a police brigade to report the fire in their church: this time, it was the church of Balade, in the commune of Pouébo, in the north-east of the territory. The whitewashed stones resisted, but not the door and the wooden altar of the building, of modest dimensions but rich in symbolism: it was there, in 1843, that the evangelization of Grande Terre began, ten years before France declared, in exactly the same place, to take possession of New Caledonia.
An act – the sixth in less than three months against a Catholic building – that the Archbishop of Noumea, Michel Calvet, who has been based in Caillou since the late 1960s, does not understand. “Dozens of people call me every day to find an explanation. I am still looking”the Marist father sighs.
The link between colonization and religion? “The Church has shown that it has been on the side of the indigenous people”In particular, in terms of education, public schools did not open their doors to the Kanaks until 1953. It was therefore the missionaries, Catholics on Grande Terre and Protestants on the Loyalty Islands, who enabled them to access education. But religious issues are also often mixed up with the land problem, which has never been fully resolved in New Caledonia.
Michel Calvet clearly recognizes “misunderstandings, even glaring mistakes”but also remember that in 1993, on the occasion of the 150thmy anniversary, celebrated in Balade, of the first mass celebrated in New Caledonia, he himself, before six thousand faithful, the great majority Kanaks, invited “To acknowledge the wrongs committed against the Melanesian people. (…). It is the Gospel itself that leads us to ask for forgiveness. »
“Satanic Rite”
An investigation has been opened at the Noumea prosecutor’s office “ “Each of these facts. As for the causes, they seem to be multiple. On social media we see an assimilation between religion and colonization. There may also be a phenomenon of mass alcoholism that encourages playing with matches. Sometimes it is definitely a bit of both.”says prosecutor Yves Dupas, who does not rule out, in connection with the destruction by fire of the Saint-Louis church in Mont-Dore, “a satanic rite”.
In July, after the first fires, the president of the collegiate government of New Caledonia, Louis Mapou, condemned “ acts, tainted with irresponsibility, [qui] “undermine the principles of fraternity and sharing that form the basis of the values on which New Caledonian society was built”. According to this pro-independence leader of the Kanak Liberation Party (Palika), “No discontent or anger can justify them”.
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