A group of French Muslims volunteered to stand guard outside their town’s cathedral to protect it and show solidarity with Catholic churchgoers.
Local Muslim residents in the southern French town of Lodeve organized the initiative as a gesture of peace after a deadly terrorist attack on a church in the French city of Nice. They stood guard outside the Lodeve cathedral for the All Saints’ holiday weekend, and hope to do the same for Christmas.
The cathedral’s priest and churchgoers welcomed the gesture, which also comes amid tensions between France and the Muslim world.
“It’s very good, these young people who are against violence,” the cathedral’s priest, the Rev. Luis Iniguez, told the AP.
When a local newspaper published a photo of parishioners posing with their Muslim guards, Iniguez hung it inside the Gothic cathedral, which serves as an anchor for town life. “People were happy to see that,” he said, especially amid recent concerns about tensions between France and the Muslim world, on top of ongoing fears of the virus.
