The commotion didn’t last long, because everything happened very quickly on Wednesday the 25th of December. On this Christmas Day, the pews in Saint-Charles Cathedral in the heart of Saint-Etienne are well occupied. The service starts at 10.30 a.m. on a day that is a public holiday for Christians.
It is around 11 a.m. when a worshipper observes a man entering the cathedral. He is dressed in ‘traditional clothing’, as Yves Cellier, the interdepartmental director of the National Police, confirmed to us on Wednesday afternoon. According to an eyewitness, it is a djellaba or qamis, complemented by a headscarf and possibly a turban.
A worried worshipper decides to leave the cathedral inconspicuously. Outside the cathedral, he comes across two city police officers on motorbikes. He calls them over and informs them of the incident. The city police officers immediately alerted their colleagues from the national police and within a few minutes the crime-fighting brigade was on the scene.
The officers entered the building and were able to locate the reported person without difficulty due to his clothing, which is rather unusual in a Catholic place of worship. The man was asked to accompany the officers, showed no resistance and was taken into a police vehicle.
He is currently on our offices,’ confirmed Yves Cellier. This intrusion was likely to cause a disturbance of public order, which justified our intervention.’ The chief of police in the Loire department stated that ‘the service was able to take place as planned, as the officers were quickly on site thanks to the alarm raised by a worshipper’.
It is now a matter for the police to ‘carry out checks, both at judicial and intelligence level’. And to determine the motives for the intrusion as well.
For Yves Cellier, ‘what counts is that any risk was averted very quickly and that, apart from the commotion within the community of believers, there was no violence and no victims’.
Saint-Charles Cathedral, like all Christian and Jewish places of worship, is subject to increased surveillance during the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays.
