PARIS (LifeSiteNews) — Once again thousands took to the streets of Paris on Saturday to protest against COVID restrictions and the vaccine pass that has been effective in France since January 24 while the Omicron variant has all but taken over.
Despite an 80 percent vaccination rate for the total population, according to official figures, hundreds of thousands of new “cases” are being registered each day – France alone now accounts for 10 percent of all COVID infections worldwide. Nevertheless, the pressure on hospitals and ICU units is relaxing.
Neighboring countries such as Switzerland are scrapping their sanitary passport system, and England is expected to abandon plans to force health workers to get the COVID experimental injection, but the French government is soldiering on, making it even harder to get and keep the new pass that allows bearers to use fast transport, restaurants, cafés, and cultural, leisure, and sports venues.
The latest restriction—announced incidentally on national media by health minister Olivier Véran—is a case in point. Last Monday, a government decree set out the conditions for obtaining the new vaccine pass: it requires either full vaccination plus a “booster” shot within four months of the second jab, or proof of recovery less than six months previously. For no reason beyond that of aligning recovery with the “vaccines,” Véran has decided that recovery will allow only the obtaining of a four-month pass before the “vaccine” is required. There is obviously no scientific justification for this, just an administrative decision and the will to “piss off” the unvaccinated, as French president Emmanuel Macron recently promised to do “until the bitter end.”
But what with the many Canadian flags side-by-side with French flags and the banners of the French provinces, and the cheers for the “Freedom Convoys” that are echoing from Canada to Australia, there was a new air of purpose and hope in the Paris demonstration despite the dreary weather. On February 5 or 6, a European truckers protest is expected to reach Brussels, the so-called “capital” of the European Union. The weekly freedom demonstration will also take place: more than 80 have been organized every Saturday by Florian Philippot of the “Patriots” movement since the 2020 beginning of the COVID scare and its absurd and contradictory restrictions.
French Catholic lawyer leads lawsuits, opens home for passport-freed cultural events
This week, the Paris freedom demonstration ended with music and dancing in the streets right next to the seat of the health ministry. Long after the sun had set, demonstrators were still enjoying the impromptu party together with lawyer Fabrice Di Vizio, who is doing all he can to help people, especially health workers who are under a vaccine mandate, circumnavigate restrictions.
Di Vizio has led several lawsuits against the French state over the mandates. He has also set up a private cinema in his large Paris home to allow people to enjoy films without having to show a vaccine pass. On Sunday afternoon, he and his wife organized a classic concert near Paris in a private venue, where the vaccine pass is not required. His objective is to help create many “parallel” concerts, shows, dinners, and other events so as to defeat the government’s objective of isolating, shaming, scapegoating, and shunning the so-called “unvaxxed” (and those who, out of solidarity, will not use their valid pass).
Fabrice Di Vizio is not only courageous and coherent – he refuses all media invitations for which the vaccine pass is required – he is also a Catholic who is not afraid to affirm his creed. During Advent, last December, he went so far as to give four 90-minute spiritual conferences, and every time he speaks at a freedom rally in Paris, he reminds hearers with his closing words that whatever happens, spiritual liberty and supernatural hope are ours: “Put your hope in the Lord: be strong and take courage!”
In secularist France, among people of all origins and social backgrounds, such language is unexpected, to say the least. But this is truly a mark of the present growing resistance towards the growing tyranny of the “covidists:” it is widespread and multifarious, bringing together very different people and excluding no-one. Besides the many French flags brandished in the streets of Paris on Saturday, there are also royalist flags with fleurs de lys and banners with the Sacred Heart.
One week earlier, I joined a weekly freedom march in Brittany that walked to the sound of the binou (Breton bagpipes) and the bombarde (Breton oboe); all around me were black and white flags and the honest, weathered faces of many sturdy Bretons who do not want to be bereft of their freedoms, and who will not let their children or grandchildren be injected with the experimental jabs.
A few hundred or even many thousands of pacific marchers will probably not suffice to make the authorities back down from their plans. On the other hand, these marches are proving to be meeting places for those who feel isolated and alone. It is here that first-hand stories of standing up to the restrictions and the mandates are exchanged. It is here that one hears of adverse effects of the jab witnessed among family members, neighbors, or co-workers. It is here that, for many, social bonding remains possible without masks and without fear.
Without such vocal resistance and support, would we be where we are now in France? An increasing number of medical doctors are – more or less discreetly or fearfully – acknowledging that they have seen ample evidence of the side-effects of mRNA “vaccines,” even on mainstream television. More news anchors are timidly raising objections against the official narrative.
Mayors standing together for freedom
In the “Haute-Savoie,” an administrative department of the French Alps, a group of mayors is doing its best to break free from present restrictions. Their voice was heard all over France when a local TV station posted an interview with two of them that was watched by several hundred thousand people shortly after it was published on social media. These mayors have the support of three senators who are among the few members of Parliament opposing the COVID tyranny with the greatest vigor.
Their story is a lesson that shows how important it is to meet with people in the flesh. Nine local elected officials, including Luc Patois, mayor of Marcellaz, happened to discover at a meeting of nine representatives of local municipalities that no fewer than six of them were unvaxxed and did not have the mandatory sanitary pass. They decided to create a group – one that grew and grew: by October, over 280 elected officials of the Haute-Savoie had signed a document demanding for an end to the sanitary pass.
“Every day, in our communities of Haute-Savoie, whether they are large or small, rural or urban, we see little by little how division is becoming entrenched. We see the couples that we have united tear apart. We are witnessing the break-up of century-old associations,” they wrote. These mayors and local leaders have been witnessing the break-up of the social fabric, while fear and suspicion spread and children are suffering under mask mandates.
Several have taken steps to maintain local festivities by asking private citizens to open their homes and gardens for traditional feasts or Christmas fairs: no vaccine passes, ID controls, or other restrictions can be enforced in private venues. Together with Sabrina Ancel, mayoress of Saint-de-Tholome, Patois proclaimed last Saturday: “We are doing all that is in our power to make known how bad these vaccine passports are and how they are really dividing the population, and we shall continue.” Ancel added: “We are asked to put protocols in place, and to implement measures. We see the incoherence of all these protocols, and we can’t say anything. So now we have decided not to keep quiet any longer because enough is enough!”
Both complained of the “single thought” that is being imposed on the public by the authorities and the mainstream media, and they have promised to reach out to other mayors who are ready to oppose the “disaster” of mask mandates for children, and to sound the alert “now that our fundamental liberties are being challenged.”
Meanwhile, the public Rosary movement that was initiated in Austria at the end of November by a French entrepreneur living in Vienna to pray for a peaceful end to the restrictions on fundamental liberties has spread to France and is growing in strength every week. In less than three weeks since the first public prayers of the Rosary took place on Wednesday, January 12, near wayside crosses and Marian oratories or in front of parish churches and chapels, has doubled: of this writing, 10,519 members have joined the “La France prie” group on Telegram, and weekly public prayer events on Wednesday crossed the 2,000 mark today – not counting several hundred such events taking place on other days of the week.
This means that over one half of all the public Rosaries that are now being said in Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Georgia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Luxemburg, Mauritius, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Uganda, the UK and the United States (total count: 3948) are being prayed in France.
In a country where restrictions and mandates are harsher than in most places in the world, and where the so-called “unvaxxed” have been dubbed “non-citizens” by President Macron, that is probably the most hopeful sign of all.
