“Incites hatred” –

Charlie Hebdo is once again in the eye of the storm. Two Catholic associations, Marie de Nazareth and La petite Voie, have filed a complaint with a Paris court against the satirical weekly, accusing it of “provocation and incitement to religious hatred”. The magazine has been in the crosshairs after the publication, on August 16, of a caricature of the Virgin Mary depicted with the symptoms of monkeypox and heavily insulted. The complaint was filed against the cartoonist Pierrick Juin and against Riss, the editorial director of Charlie Hebdo. The Tribune Chrétien also denounced the cartoon, calling it “gratuitous incitement to hatred against Catholics in France” and launched a petition to have the caricature withdrawn, which it considers “insulting, provocative, explicitly inciting hatred towards the Catholic community”.

The petition has so far collected almost 25,000 signatures. The caricature has also been strongly criticized by some religious figures, in particular by the bishop of Bayonne Marc Aillet, who wrote in X that “freedom of expression cannot justify such an abject caricature.” The controversy is polarizing the debate in France, where discussions on the formation of the new government are also taking center stage and where negative reviews of the Olympics are still rumbling. The issue raised by Catholic authorities after the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games was the main cause of outcry, with the painting depicting several drag queens and reminiscent of the Last Supper, defined as “derision and mockery of Christianity.”