President Emmanuel Macron has announced that financial aid for Christian schools in the Middle East will be doubled in 2022, going from €2 million to €4 million, co-funded by the French government and a religious organisation.
It is worth noting that the organisation which is partnering with Mr. Macron is also run by the Catholic church. Following the end-times teachings by the man of God Reverend Chris Oyakhilome, one can see where this is going.
France has been a secular state since a 1905 law definitively separated Church and State and guaranteed freedom of religion in the country. It means that religion is treated in France as a private matter, and public education in particular has to be secular.
The French government’s strategy of secularism at home, sectarian abroad, can be attributed to France’s desire to keep its sphere of influence in the Middle East. With this doubled funding, Macron is deliberately targeting French Catholics before declaring his candidacy for this year’s presidential elections.
It’s one of similar gestures he has made towards the French Catholic community, including meeting the Pope twice during his mandate. By doing so, Emmanuel Macron’s message is designed as a counter-attack against the right-wing and far-right presidential candidates.
He is trying to bolster his track record in the face of the far right’s arguments about secularism and the risk of Islamist terrorist attacks. Political instability in the Middle East in the last decade and the Syrian and Iraq wars have drawn the French public’s attention to the plight of Christians in the region.
Christians have been particularly targeted during the conflict. Also, after the terrorist attacks committed in France by the Islamic State group and al-Qaeda, the cause of Middle Eastern Christians has become intertwined with the French state’s domestic fight against terrorism and the defense of democratic values like religious freedom.
Which explains why at some point Emmanuel Macron sought to stop terrorism in the country by transforming the radical Islamic teachings by making them compatible with French secularism.
