This Catholic school in the northern districts of Marseille, which does not offer catechism classes, has over 95% Muslim pupils.
At first sight, “Saint-Jo” alias Saint-Joseph Viala is no different from other types of schools in La Cabucelle, one of the famous northern districts of Marseille.
This Catholic school in the northern districts of Marseille, which does not offer catechism classes, has over 95% Muslim pupils.
At first sight, “Saint-Jo” alias Saint-Joseph Viala is no different from other types of schools in La Cabucelle, one of the famous northern districts of Marseille. The school is Catholic, but there is no catechesis, but “inter-religious teaching”. The children, from two-year-old toddlers to third graders, are over 95 % Muslims with a North African migrant background. The same noises can be heard in the courtyard of the older children and in the courtyard of the adjacent kindergarten. The same buildings, more or less dilapidated, stand next to the same prefabricated buildings. There is a vegetable garden, like everywhere else, and physical exercises in the morning before going to class. Mothers, veiled or not, and the few fathers who accompany the youngest are asked to stay at the door of the institution, which no one enters who is not duly authorised to do so. (…) Le Figaro