Paris, France, Dec 13, 2012 / 16:37 pm
A French cabinet member announced that the government will monitor certain groups for "religious pathology," including a traditionalist Catholic organization, and will shut them down if it is discovered.
"The objective is to identify when it's suitable to intervene to treat what has become a religious pathology," Interior Minister Manuel Valls told a conference on the official policy of secularism, according to Reuters.
"The aim is not to combat opinions by force, but to detect and understand when an opinion turns into a potentially violent and criminal excess," he said at the Dec. 11 conference.
Valls' remarks come in the wake of President Francois Hollande's announcement Dec. 9 that he would create the "National Observatory of Secularism" to promote France's policy and to "formulate propositions for the transmission of 'public morality,' giving it a dignified place in schools."