It was a sunny All Saints' Day that dawned this morning in Toulon. The air has cooled, the sky is an intense blue, it finally smells like autumn. It's only 8 o'clock. In the market, the fairgrounds are finishing setting up their stalls when we hear, carried by the light wind, the voices of young girls.
It’s a clear, joyful, and accurate polyphony! They are Guides, wearing navy skirts and light blouses, who are walking down the Cours Lafayette behind the teenager who is holding her banner high. It's incredibly fresh.
At this early hour, there are only families on their way to All Saints' Mass and retirees wandering around the city. In Toulon, like everywhere now, the division was made between populations, geographical and temporal: each has its own place and each has its own time. So, in two hours, there will be a large majority of veiled women pushing their shopping carts on this market, while their husbands and sons will be seated on the café terraces.
A whiff of yesterday’s France
These young girls who come forward, proudly wearing the values of scouting in their uniform, are a breath of the France of yesterday. The old people stop, smiling like angels. We say hello to them, a little bravo even, when a fairground worker setting out his squashes shouts a resounding “Allah Akbar!” “. Everything is said.
The songs follow us on the morning walk which takes us along the Merchant Port, then along the avenue de l'Infanterie de marine. The scouts go up Boulevard de Grignan. They go to Sainte Philomène, a church of the Society of Saint Pius X; those that do not please the Pope.
On this level of religious renewal, it must be said, does Toulon please the current pope? Its blessings of the palm trees on the old port, its processions which go up from Saint-François de Paule towards the cathedral, the troop of young Missionaries of Divine Mercy – based in Fréjus and Toulon – who are responsible for evangelizing in Muslim lands. To be honest, Mgr Rey, the local bishop, does not seem to be in the odor of holiness in Rome. As we wrote here last Easter, in a Church which has long since moved to the left and made the immigrant the untouchable Christ figure, the community of Missionaries of Divine Mercy does not have a good press. We don't dare openly call its members fascists but we feel that it's not far off.
Dare to raise your head
We begin to think that these young girls who walk while singing have a lot of courage. They embody France which is raising its head, like this friend, French of Jewish faith, met yesterday. A big guy who served thirty years ago on the Golan Heights and can no longer stand the screaming hordes who cross the historic center of the city every Saturday afternoon since October 7. Exasperated by the cries and the forest of Palestinian flags, the other day he intoned Hatikva (Hope), the national anthem of Israel. “ Our hope is not yet lost, a hope 2000 years old, to be a free people on our land “, say the lyrics.
Stunned, the demonstrators lowered their voices and applause began to rise timidly from the surrounding terraces. Proof that our hope is not yet lost…
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