In the midst of the battle for the legislative elections to be held in France on Sunday, June 30th, a shocking incident happened to a Rassemblement National candidate running for the post of deputy for the overseas constituency of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. While attending Sunday Mass in the cathedral of the town of Saint-Pierre, she was expelled in the middle of the ceremony as an undesirable person. She denounces the confiscation of local authority by a clique driven by violent ideological rancour. Patricia Chagnon spoke to The European Conservative about the incident.
Chagnon, also an MEP and member of the Identity and Democracy group, is standing as a candidate for the Rassemblement National in the parliamentary elections for the North Atlantic constituency of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. She has been on the island campaigning for the past few days. While she was there, she was able to gauge the hostility orchestrated against her and her party—with the complicity of the local authorities, in this case, the prefect, who is the representative of state authority on the island.
On Sunday, June 23rd, the island celebrated its traditional Sailors’ Festival (Fête des Marins), which includes a blessing of the boats in the port of Saint-Pierre at the end of the Sunday Mass. Patricia Chagnon attended the Mass in the town’s cathedral—not as an elected representative or candidate, but as a simple member of the faithful. Seated in the front row, where a few empty seats remained when she arrived, Patricia Chagnon was approached by two women during communion. Initially thinking that these people were there to give the Eucharist, the MEP was not at all suspicious. But the two women, who were approaching her with a very specific purpose in mind, attacked her violently and asked her to leave the Assembly. “Madam, you don’t belong here, please leave,” the candidate was told. After asking her interlocutors to wait until the end of Mass, and faced with their insistence and aggressiveness, Chagnon preferred to stand up and leave at their behest, anxious to avoid a scene likely to disturb the contemplation of the faithful at the very moment of Communion.
Deeply shocked by this treatment, Chagnon was unaware at the time of the events of the identity of the two women responsible for evicting her. The first was quickly identified by local acquaintances: she was the former socialist mayor of Saint-Pierre. The identity of the second remained a mystery at first. After Mass, a gathering was held on the quayside for the blessing of the boats. Patricia Chagnon met and greeted the prefect. The state representative’s response was more than cold. As the candidate tried to draw his attention to the extremely serious events that had just taken place in the church, she was stunned to discover the end of the story: the second person was none other than the prefect’s wife. After dropping the information, the man abruptly refused any discussion.
Photo: @ChagnonPatricia on X, 23 June, 2024.
This is not the first time that Patricia Chagnon has come up against the open hostility of the local administration in this crazy campaign. A few days earlier, on June 18th, she was prevented from laying a wreath at the commemoration of General de Gaulle’s Appeal. The prefect had allegedly received instructions from Paris to do so, arguing that Patricia Chagnon’s term of office had ended on June 9th, with the European elections. The MEP investigated: the argument was fallacious, as the European Parliament’s rules stipulate that MEPs from the previous legislature remain in office until the new assembly is convened, which this year is July, 16th. Chagnon was nonetheless able to attend the ceremonies—without laying a wreath—and wore her elected representative’s scarf, but it was then that she realised the hatred to which she was subjected—quite simply because she belonged to the Rassemblement National. Her expulsion from Saint-Pierre cathedral was just another episode in a scenario orchestrated locally—with the approval or at least guilty tolerance of Paris.
Since the event, the prefect’s entourage has claimed that Patricia Chagnon is to blame, as she was never expelled but simply asked to “move on.” If it was just a misunderstanding, why didn’t the prefect’s wife apologise, even if only formally? Why would the prefect himself have refused to discuss the matter?
The facts are serious and virtually unprecedented. The expulsion of Patricia Chagnon in the middle of Mass by a former mayor and the prefect’s wife is an exceptionally violent attack on her freedom to practise her religion. The sacred precincts of the church were not respected by unscrupulous women, acting without any mandate other than that of their good conscience to act in the service of a supposedly good camp. When asked if she had been ‘invited’ to the cathedral, Chagnon replied simply: “I’m a practising Catholic, and every Sunday I’m simply invited to church by Jesus!”
Busy distributing communion, the parish priest didn’t see what happened. Contacted by Chagnon on Sunday afternoon, he said he was deeply shocked by the violence.
The MEP added:
We are no longer dealing with representatives of the state, but with ideological militants, who take the liberty of intervening in the middle of an election period, with a feeling of total impunity.
Patricia Chagnon has no intention of letting this ‘incident’ go unchallenged and will have to take the matter all the way up to the Ministry of the Interior. On two occasions, she has found herself the victim of aggressive and determined political activism, operating in an opaque manner. For example, Chagnon never received the letter forbidding her to lay her wreath on June 18th but had to bow to underhand pressure devoid of any transparency.
Patricia Chagnon would like to point out that her adventure is simply the expression of what the Rassemblement National intends to fight for with all its might in the next election: the restoration of the credibility of the State, which has been seriously undermined by corrupt officials and politicians.
Hélène de Lauzun is the Paris correspondent for The European Conservative. She studied at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. She taught French literature and civilization at Harvard and received a Ph.D. in History from the Sorbonne. She is the author of Histoire de l’Autriche (Perrin, 2021).
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France: Prefect’s Wife Expels RN MEP in the Middle of Mass
Cathedral in St Pierre, in the French Overseas Collectivity of St Pierre and Miquelon.
Photo: John R. Bopp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
In the midst of the battle for the legislative elections to be held in France on Sunday, June 30th, a shocking incident happened to a Rassemblement National candidate running for the post of deputy for the overseas constituency of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. While attending Sunday Mass in the cathedral of the town of Saint-Pierre, she was expelled in the middle of the ceremony as an undesirable person. She denounces the confiscation of local authority by a clique driven by violent ideological rancour. Patricia Chagnon spoke to The European Conservative about the incident.
Chagnon, also an MEP and member of the Identity and Democracy group, is standing as a candidate for the Rassemblement National in the parliamentary elections for the North Atlantic constituency of Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. She has been on the island campaigning for the past few days. While she was there, she was able to gauge the hostility orchestrated against her and her party—with the complicity of the local authorities, in this case, the prefect, who is the representative of state authority on the island.
On Sunday, June 23rd, the island celebrated its traditional Sailors’ Festival (Fête des Marins), which includes a blessing of the boats in the port of Saint-Pierre at the end of the Sunday Mass. Patricia Chagnon attended the Mass in the town’s cathedral—not as an elected representative or candidate, but as a simple member of the faithful. Seated in the front row, where a few empty seats remained when she arrived, Patricia Chagnon was approached by two women during communion. Initially thinking that these people were there to give the Eucharist, the MEP was not at all suspicious. But the two women, who were approaching her with a very specific purpose in mind, attacked her violently and asked her to leave the Assembly. “Madam, you don’t belong here, please leave,” the candidate was told. After asking her interlocutors to wait until the end of Mass, and faced with their insistence and aggressiveness, Chagnon preferred to stand up and leave at their behest, anxious to avoid a scene likely to disturb the contemplation of the faithful at the very moment of Communion.
Deeply shocked by this treatment, Chagnon was unaware at the time of the events of the identity of the two women responsible for evicting her. The first was quickly identified by local acquaintances: she was the former socialist mayor of Saint-Pierre. The identity of the second remained a mystery at first. After Mass, a gathering was held on the quayside for the blessing of the boats. Patricia Chagnon met and greeted the prefect. The state representative’s response was more than cold. As the candidate tried to draw his attention to the extremely serious events that had just taken place in the church, she was stunned to discover the end of the story: the second person was none other than the prefect’s wife. After dropping the information, the man abruptly refused any discussion.
This is not the first time that Patricia Chagnon has come up against the open hostility of the local administration in this crazy campaign. A few days earlier, on June 18th, she was prevented from laying a wreath at the commemoration of General de Gaulle’s Appeal. The prefect had allegedly received instructions from Paris to do so, arguing that Patricia Chagnon’s term of office had ended on June 9th, with the European elections. The MEP investigated: the argument was fallacious, as the European Parliament’s rules stipulate that MEPs from the previous legislature remain in office until the new assembly is convened, which this year is July, 16th. Chagnon was nonetheless able to attend the ceremonies—without laying a wreath—and wore her elected representative’s scarf, but it was then that she realised the hatred to which she was subjected—quite simply because she belonged to the Rassemblement National. Her expulsion from Saint-Pierre cathedral was just another episode in a scenario orchestrated locally—with the approval or at least guilty tolerance of Paris.
Since the event, the prefect’s entourage has claimed that Patricia Chagnon is to blame, as she was never expelled but simply asked to “move on.” If it was just a misunderstanding, why didn’t the prefect’s wife apologise, even if only formally? Why would the prefect himself have refused to discuss the matter?
The facts are serious and virtually unprecedented. The expulsion of Patricia Chagnon in the middle of Mass by a former mayor and the prefect’s wife is an exceptionally violent attack on her freedom to practise her religion. The sacred precincts of the church were not respected by unscrupulous women, acting without any mandate other than that of their good conscience to act in the service of a supposedly good camp. When asked if she had been ‘invited’ to the cathedral, Chagnon replied simply: “I’m a practising Catholic, and every Sunday I’m simply invited to church by Jesus!”
Busy distributing communion, the parish priest didn’t see what happened. Contacted by Chagnon on Sunday afternoon, he said he was deeply shocked by the violence.
The MEP added:
Patricia Chagnon has no intention of letting this ‘incident’ go unchallenged and will have to take the matter all the way up to the Ministry of the Interior. On two occasions, she has found herself the victim of aggressive and determined political activism, operating in an opaque manner. For example, Chagnon never received the letter forbidding her to lay her wreath on June 18th but had to bow to underhand pressure devoid of any transparency.
Patricia Chagnon would like to point out that her adventure is simply the expression of what the Rassemblement National intends to fight for with all its might in the next election: the restoration of the credibility of the State, which has been seriously undermined by corrupt officials and politicians.
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