Six Catholic activists linked to the traditionalist movement Civitas were held in police custody for nearly 48 hours after attempting to block a contemporary art installation from taking place inside the Church of Saint-Laurent in Paris' 10th arrondissement on the evening of Saturday, June 6 — the opening night of the city's 25th annual Nuit Blanche ("Sleepless Night") festival.
According to online reports, they were released on the evening of June 8.
The Paris prosecutor's office confirmed to AFP that the six were detained following disturbances by a group of approximately 30 individuals outside and inside the church on boulevard Magenta.
Two of those held are suspected of voluntary violence against Alexandra Cordebard, the Socialist mayor of the 10th arrondissement, and Pouria Amirshahi, an Ecologist member of the National Assembly, both of whom reported being jostled and said they intended to file complaints.
The four others were held for participating in an unlawful assembly after refusing to disperse following official warnings.
The City of Paris announced Saturday night that it would also file a complaint, accusing "far-right fundamentalist militants" of attempting to prevent the presentation of one of the festival's works.
Authorization for the use of Saint-Laurent was granted by the parish and the Archdiocese of Paris through their established cultural partnership with the association Art, Culture et Foi, which regularly facilitates artistic events in Parisian churches.
Titled?"Sous la peau du ciel"?("Under the Skin of the Sky"), artist Marie-Luce Nadal's immersive sound installation was conceived as an invisible membrane stretched between what represented the atmosphere and human beings. It consisted of playing recordings of wishes from anonymous people collected from around the world, mixed and blended with the sounds of thunder and lightning and then played inside the church.
Among the recorded wishes shared during the evening were: "I hope the true left comes to power"; "I hope everyone's soul takes over"; "I hope to be happy and in love all the time"; and "more pasta in the school cafeteria."
The broader controversy, however, centered on the Nuit Blanche's artistic director, Barbara Butch, a French DJ and LGBT activist who became a polarizing figure after her appearance in a tableau during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The scene, which featured drag queens and dancers seated along a long table with Butch at the center — wearing a silver headdress resembling a halo — was widely interpreted on social media as a mockery of Leonardo da Vinci's?famous painting "The Last Supper." Butch later posted a caption on Instagram reading "Oh yes! Oh yes! The New Gay Testament!"
Against that backdrop, the appointment of Butch to lead the 2026 Nuit Blanche — an event that included programming inside several Parisian churches — drew organized objection from some Catholic groups weeks before the festival opened.
Civitas International, along with the?Knights of Our Lady?(Militia Sanctae Mariae), had publicly called on Catholics to protest the use of church buildings for the festival. Civitas International is distinct from the French political party Civitas, which was dissolved by the French government in late 2023. It remains active in Switzerland and Belgium and continues to operate online.
In a statement issued Sunday, Civitas International president Alain Escada denied that the group had organized a "collective" action and rejected the accusations of violence.
"We challenge anyone to produce a single image of any aggression carried out against Alexandra Cordebard or deputy Pouria Amirshahi by Catholics during this action," the statement read, calling the accusations an attempt to "intimidate, stigmatize, or even criminalize" Catholics.
Escada also cited the opinion of jurist Grégor Puppinck, director of the European Centre for Law and Justice, that using a place of worship for purposes unrelated to worship constitutes a violation of both Article 13 of France's 1905 Law on the Separation of Church and State and Canon 1210 of the Code of Canon Law.
Whether physical violence occurred remains contested. The mayor stated on X that she "personally received blows" from individuals who wanted to prevent entry to the church. Those detained offer a sharply different account.
Mathieu Goyer, president of the association Sainte-Geneviève Paris, who was among those arrested, said in a June 9 interview that he was held for 44 hours across three different police stations.
"The mayor of the 10th accused us of violence — that is why our custody was extended," he said. "But when police reviewed the surveillance footage, the mayor can be seen on the other side of the church gate. She simply wanted her media moment."
The Paris Public Prosecutor's Office announced on the evening of June 9 that it had closed the case against the six activists, concluding that "there was insufficient evidence of any offense."
The Archdiocese of Paris, for its part, has not issued any public statement on the events.
Conservative Catholic commentators, including Olivier Frèrejacques of the political review?Liberté Politique, described this silence as "incomprehensible" and questioned why Church authorities had agreed to host a festival directed by Butch in the first place.
