The traditionalist Catholic movement Academia Christiana filed a complaint for defamation on Tuesday, December 12, against Gérald Darmanin, their lawyer announced on the social network X. The complaint, filed with the Court of Justice of the Republic (CJR), and that Agence France-Presse was able to consult the comments made by the Minister of the Interior on Monday on the CNews channel.
He affirmed that, “this summer, [Academia Christiana has] notably advocated anti-Semitism”, and he attributed to them “very great support for the collaboration of Marshal Pétain”.
According to Mr. Frédéric Pichon, who defends Academia Christiana, “such remarks were never made” during the association’s summer universities, and Mr. Darmanin confused the summer universities of Academia Christiana and those of fundamentalist Catholic movement Civitas.
The minister’s comments “are all the more serious as they claim to support a request for dissolution of the association”, we can read in the complaint. A “request which is exceptional and which is therefore based, in the communication from the Minister of the Interior, on fallacious and invented facts, since it seems that Mr. Darmanin has confused the Academia Christiana association with the Civitas association, this which shows the lack of seriousness of the approach”.
An “integral” training institute
On Sunday, the Minister of the Interior announced that he would present to the Council of Ministers, “in the coming weeks”, the decree to dissolve Academia Christiana. Founded in 2013 by young people close to the identity movement, Academia Christiana presents itself as an “integral” training institute, both “spiritual, moral, intellectual and sporting”.
This organization is chaired by Victor Aubert, professor of French and philosophy at the Institut Croix-des-Vents in Sées (Orne), a private educational establishment outside of a contract run by the Priestly Fraternity of Saint-Pierre, a traditionalist institute recognized by Rome.
After the announcement of its upcoming dissolution, Academia Christiana received a lot of support from the far right on social networks, particularly from the movement close to Eric Zemmour.
The CJR is the only jurisdiction empowered to prosecute and judge members of the government for crimes and offenses committed in the exercise of their functions. Complaints addressed to it are filtered by a complaints committee, which can classify them or transmit them to an investigating committee. At the end of the investigation, this commission declares a dismissal of the case or a referral to the judgment panel of the CJR.