In Honor of St. Genevieve

Yesterday I was sitting in a pub just across the street from the church St. Etienne de Mont in the 5th arrondissement, when I noticed a group of men carrying a large pot into the small plaza in front of the church. Several police officers followed. A police car pulled up the steep and narrow road next to the church with its lights flashing.

Obviously something was happening.

We puzzled over it. Could it be a Sunday feed-the-poor event? Probably not, this was the pricy student district, after all. A protest? Then why the large pot?

Then they marched in.

Some were carrying candles. Others Parisian flags. A group near the front had a large banner which read "Patrimony of Paris. Hommage to St. Genevieve". Suddenly it made a little more sense. St. Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, is buried in St. Etienne de Mont Church. The Pantheon, which now functions as a secular mausoleum, was originally intended to house her remains and her relics.

A man on a loud speaker led the crowd in some chants and then they set off some small fireworks. Smoke filled the plaza. After a quarter of an hour, the crowd formed a line to get whatever was in the big pot. About the same time I left the pub to go home. I discovered the solution to at least one mystery: the pot contained mulled wine, to warm and cheer the fans of St. Genevieve.

Afterwards, I found this website Paris Fierté (Paris Pride), which advertises and explains the march:

Like every year, on January 8, 2012, Parisians will descend into the streets, more numerous that last year, in order to pay homage to their patron saint and proclaim their pride in their history and their identity.
Because this march for St. Genevieve is much more than just a simple symbolic commemoration. It is also an intense moment of communion and hope for the future.

[C]omme chaque année, le 8 janvier 2012, les Parisiens vont descendre dans la rue, plus nombreux qu’à l’édition précédente, pour rendre hommage à leur sainte patronne et proclamer la fierté de leur histoire et de leur identité.
Car cette marche pour Sainte Geneviève est bien autre chose qu’une simple commémoration symbolique, c’est également un intense moment de communion et d’espoir pour l’avenir.

Some mysteries remain. For an American evangelical, it's doubly and triply hard to understand these sort of events. For starters, unless you're from a city with a big Irish, Italian, or Latin American population, most Americans have never seen marches to honor saints. I know growing up in various cities in the West, I never saw one.

Secondly, it's hard to know what sort of people are involved in the march. The language on the website resembles the coded language of the far right--honor and pride in the past with reminders of a white Christian past which is less and less present. It's always hard to know how to separate pride in the past with a desire to return there.

Thirdly, it's hard to know what they're hoping for. French laïcité is so firmly grounded in culture and politics now, it's hard to imagine going back to the pre-Revolution past before they burned up St. Genevieve's relics, let alone rolling back the waves of immigration and cultural change of the past half-century. It's just not clear to me what these sort of groups want. A more Catholic France? A whiter France? A miracle to get out of the Euro crisis? Better history teaching?