Secretly recorded footage of a Paratrooper chaplain delivering a sermon calling on men of faith to prevent the French people from being replaced has caused a political firestorm after it was published by a left-wing newspaper.
The French government is seeking disciplinary procedures, and the leading leftist presidential candidate has called for arrests after a military chaplain gave a sermon that critics say touched on the notion of the “Great Replacement Theory” — that Europeans are being subjected to a cold genocide by mass migration.
The sermon was recorded at the cathedral in Carcassonne, the world-famous fortified city, on October 7th 2025, but was only released on Friday amid ever-greater attention from France’s mainstream media on the conservative city, which recently elected a National Rally mayor. In the video, the chaplain was heard addressing his “family” — the soldiers of the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment, who are garrisoned in the city.
At a service to mark the feast of the patron saint of paratroopers, Saint Michael, the chaplain called on those in the congregation to note the war memorial outside the church, with the names and dates of those who fell defending France, and so it could remain a “beautiful country”. A country, he said, which those fallen soldiers believed would continue to build “basilicas, cathedrals, homes, and castles”, but which, instead of being led by “knights”, is now run by “incompetents”.
These incompetents, which he characterised as vegetarian, moralising ideologues, do not represent the true France, the chaplain said, as he implored those present to go out into the world and tell the leftists they meet to stop talking and to calm down.
This injunction from the priest caused a gale of laughter in the church from the assembled soldiers, which he responded to by continuing:
I’m getting carried away, but continue to have this courage, this enthusiasm, this faith, otherwise we will be ridiculed. Otherwise, beautiful France will be mocked, and others will take our place. Because in the Apostle’s world it’s the law of the jungle. And I don’t know if you’ve done [the Army jungle warfare school], if you’ve toughened up in the sand.
In fact, after a while when you’re hungry and thirsty, it’s the law of the strongest that reign. And others will take the place of our values, of freedom of speech, of equality, and of the brotherhood of this culture, this society. Because nature abhors a vaccum.
The chaplain said he felt comfortable speaking out on these issues because there were no cameras recording. But there was in fact a recording being made, apparently surreptitiously, and on Friday the footage was released by French satirical newspaper La Canard Enchaine to an instant outrage from the political left, who called for immediate action against the priest and his congregation of paratroopers.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the hard-left, Jeremy Corbyn-like leader of the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party, called the speech racist and seditious, and implied, at least, the speaker should be in prison. The soldiers who laughed at the remark and failed to walk out in protest or challenge the chaplain should also face consequences, he said, remarking they should be identified and “neutralised” from the military, reports Le Figaro.
One of Melenchon’s Parliamentarians, LFI politician Thomas Portes, also spoke out in outrage, stating the sermon was in line with “the Great Replacement theory”. He blamed the display on Carcassonne having a mayor from the National Rally. However, it is stated that the city had not yet voted for its new right-wing populist mayor when the video was captured last year, but the now-mayor was present in the front row of the congregation for the sermon.
The Great Replacement is a coinage of prolific French novelist Renaud Camus, and is much decried as a “conspiracy theory” by the left who insist that white Europeans are not, in fact, being substituted by migrant arrivals. Speaking to Breitbart News in 2023, Camus remarked: “For one thing there is no such thing as a ‘theory’ of Great Replacement. Great Replacement is a dire and sinister fact, not a theory”. He said his critics would struggle so much with the idea had any of them read his books, but lamented that nobody actually bothered to try.
In earlier remarks to this publication, he commented on the shifting demographics: “The change of people and civilisation for the sake of the industry of man, the economic system which produces the Undifferentiated Human Matter, the human Nutella, spreadable at will.”
Since the cathedral footage was published on Friday, the French government announced it had identified the chaplain, stated they found the sermon “inappropriate”, and said the officer had received an “official reprimand”. Following this, the Minister for the Armed Forces in Emmanuel Macron’s government said they would be taking the matter further and were seeking to institute a full disciplinary procedure.
The harsh response from the French state, led by centrist-globalist ultra Emmanuel Macron, may not be so surprising given the long-understood sympathy for traditional, Catholic France and populist-right leader Marine Le Pen among the troops and the danger some may feel this poses to them. In 2016, a highly decorated French General was stripped of his position for anti-mass-migration activism; in 2018, a group of ten generals, an admiral, and a former minister of defence broke ranks to call President Macron a ‘traitor’ for backing mass migration, and in 2021, another general spoke of the risk of “civil war”.
Read the full article here