Since mid-July, five Catholic buildings have been set on fire in New Caledonia. The perpetrators of most of these acts remain unidentified, but these atrocities raise questions in an archipelago where the weight of religion remains significant.
“If we had not arrived, our church would surely have been the first to burn.”
Niuliki Palenapa, a worshipper at the Church of Hope in Noumea, remembers the day he discovered a pyre made of benches and newspaper ready to be lit, in this place of worship in a working-class neighborhood among the most affected by the riots.
“As Christians, this particularly affected us. We decided to organize ourselves to monitor our church,” he recalls.
Since then, the place of worship has been under surveillance 24 hours a day. A spontaneous initiative, without consultation with the leaders of the Catholic Church, which has multiplied in many parishes, as a deacon and parishioners involved in these surveillance groups confirmed to AFP.
Because in a few weeks, from the Notre-Dame-de-l’Assomption church on the Isle of Pines which was partially burned down to the Saint-Louis church which went up in flames, five religious buildings have been targeted by arson attacks in New Caledonia.
In each case, investigations were opened and entrusted to the gendarmerie, without the perpetrators of these acts being brought to justice.
On the Isle of Pines, the perpetrators have been identified by customary authorities and a meeting will take place with their clan so that they can surrender to the gendarmerie, according to Jérôme Vakume, the president of the island’s customary district council.
“The great chief was very touched and strongly condemns,” he adds: “Religion is a pillar of life here, along with custom and politics.”
– “Coming out of denial” –
The Christian Churches, both Protestant and Catholic, have had a predominant presence in New Caledonia since the arrival of the first missionaries in 1843, ten years before France took possession of the archipelago.
The Churches claim nearly 150,000 followers out of a total population of 270,000 people. According to the Vice-Rectorate of New Caledonia, denominational education educates one in four students.
These fires “are affecting New Caledonia in its fundamental symbols”, explains Yves Dupas, the public prosecutor of Noumea, who adds to this series the act of vandalism that targeted the mausoleum of the great Kanak leader Ataï on July 22. However, he adds, “it is too early to say that there is a single motive”.
In Saint-Louis, a pro-independence stronghold south of Noumea where the first church burned, a suspect arrested was wearing a stolen cassock and demonstrating his opposition to the organization of his tribe, the prosecutor said. But for the other cases, the situation remains unclear. For Marie-Elizabeth Nussbaumer, a New Caledonian anthropologist, these violent acts are rekindling an old debate.
“The missionaries arrived with the army (…). Religions contributed to the destructuring of the Kanak world,” she analyses. While specifying that with time and the evangelization of the archipelago, “even independence speeches” are inspired by religious images.
The Catholic Archbishop of Noumea, Mgr Michel-Marie Calvet, sees things differently. “We have seen a desire to destroy everything that represents something organized. There are confusions on the question of colonization,” he denounces.
“We have contributed to changing the Kanak landscape, to distorting it (…) We must come out of denial and recognize certain things,” believes Pastor Var Kaemo, president of the Protestant Church of Kanaky New Caledonia (EPKNC, reformed). While the head of the main historic Protestant Church in the archipelago has no answer to the phenomenon, he says he has heard young people, on dams, express their desire to “return to their original religion”, the one that pre-existed the arrival of Christian missionaries. And he points to the rise of new denominations, particularly evangelicals, which are weakening the historic Christian confessions.
A vision shared by Zénon Wejieme, a doctoral student in anthropology working on the development of these new religious movements, who observes a gap between the historic Churches and a youth with whom they “have a hard time being in phase”.
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