French bishop condemns youth riots but sympathizes with their concerns

(LifeSiteNews) — French Bishop Matthieu Rougé condemned the arson and street violence that have marked France’s high-school protests while insisting that the “profound” unease driving many of the students is real and must be heard.

The protests began in late September in the Paris suburbs over missing teachers, overcrowded classes, and rundown buildings before spreading nationwide. By early October, they had produced fires, clashes, tear gas, and thousands of arrests.

In its weekend interview with Rougé, Vatican News reported more than 5,000 arrests since the previous Monday and millions of euros in damage, with a further massive day of protests already called for on Tuesday, October 6.

Reporting a day earlier, AgenSIR, an Italian Catholic news agency, cited more than 300 injured police officers and nearly 2,000 arrests, and noted Education Minister Édouard Geffray’s statement that 40 of 65 injured public-school employees were principals.

Earlier today, as blockades and marches continued, Reuters reported police firing tear gas in Strasbourg, Lyon, and Rennes, Interior Ministry figures of 6,100 arrests since the protests began (overwhelmingly minors), and at least 715 officers and 215 teenagers injured.

Nearly 90,000 people were reportedly already in provincial marches this morning, with a larger Paris procession still expected, and placards reading “Under our text books, anger.”

Students are demanding more resources, more teachers, and less crowded classrooms. They are also protesting Parcoursup, the nation’s 2018 online platform for applying to higher education institutions accused of subjecting the futures of young people to an algorithm.

The high-school protests have also spread to universities. with authorities closing 400 institutions, 30 faculties are at a standstill, and many courses moved online, amid controversy over masked provocateurs (“casseurs”) who smash property, loot, and instigate violence against police and others.

Young people ‘afraid of the future,’ lack ‘meaning in their lives’

Rougé, the bishop of Nanterre and president of the French bishops’ Council for Catholic Education, told Vatican News that what is certain is “the distress of this generation of young people.”

“Violence is an expression of this unease: setting fire to some high schools — even new ones — reveals a destructive violence that cannot be condoned,” he affirmed. Yet at the same time, this behavior expresses “an inner violence in some young people who have not found meaning in their lives.”

The suffering, he explained, is “linked to the crisis in families, the climate crisis, the economic crisis, the social crisis, and the geopolitical crisis; and so, more or less consciously, these young people are afraid of the future — they don’t see how it could be open to them as well.”

These factors and more produce a “profound” unease that “is sometimes unexpressed but then manifests itself in violence,” especially among those “who have not yet acquired sufficient maturity in language and expression to be able to express themselves in any other way,” the prelate observed.

This story is developing …