France's interior minister offered his resignation Sunday after a weekend in which the state lost the streets of its great cities. President Emmanuel Macron refused it.
"I offered my resignation because I am responsible for everything that happens," Laurent Nuñez said Monday on France Inter, franceinfo reported. "In some big cities, when you have hundreds of shops looted, you cannot look at shopkeepers and say that we did not lose control."
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu asked some local authorities to impose curfews after about 3,000 businesses were looted or vandalized, NBC News reported. Paris prosecutors planned the first fast-track trials for Monday, Le Parisien reported.
Police made 2,397 arrests nationwide, and 997 police officers and gendarmes were injured, seven seriously, the Interior Ministry said, BFMTV reported. Paris prosecutors counted 855 arrests Saturday and 208 more Sunday, Le Parisien reported.
On Boulevard Magenta, the One Piece pirate flag stood beside "those of the countries of the Maghreb, while Palestinian flags abounded," the magazine Marianne reported from the Paris march. In Marseille, some of those who forced their way into city hall carried Palestinian flags, and "a bust of Marianne, symbol of the Republic," was thrown to the floor, i24NEWS reported.
In Paris, the statue of Marianne at Place de la République was draped in a giant yellow vest, its base "covered in anarchist, anticapitalist or pro-Palestinian graffiti," Le Figaro reported. In Limoges, fire gutted the 19th-century town hall, whose facades and roofs are listed historic monuments. "It is a monument that burns, but not the Republic," Mayor Guillaume Guérin said, ICI reported. Saint Joan fared no better. In Toulouse, her statue "was veiled with a yellow vest" and a Palestinian flag was hung on it, while in Paris masked protesters climbed her statue at Place des Pyramides and stuck political stickers on it, Le JDD reported, citing the outlet Frontières and videos posted online. A rioter climbed the Paris statue in a video posted by Disclose.tv. That night in Toulouse, a young man climbed Saint Joan, pulled off the vest and threw the Palestinian flag to the ground, Le JDD reported; a video shared by Catholic Arena appears to show the climb.
Who looted
Authorities have released no data on the nationality or immigration status of those arrested. The Paris prosecutor's figures break down those held by age and offense, Le Parisien reported.
The Paris police prefecture said those arrested Sunday afternoon were "essentially young people coming from the suburbs looking for opportunities to loot," Le Figaro reported. Macron, in a televised address Sunday, blamed "factious elements from ultra-left splinter groups, joined by many delinquents," Le Figaro reported.
Éric Zemmour, president of Reconquête, put it differently on LCI. "We saw hordes of North African and African barbarians, raids and looting, hatred of France, foreign flags and the presence of their antifa allies. This is the face of the great replacement," he said, Le Figaro reported.
Vice President JD Vance wrote on X: "Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn't listen."
What the headlines left out
The press framed the weekend as a protest gone wrong. Franceinfo files its coverage under "Mobilisation du 17 octobre." NBC News ran "France moves to impose curfews as it reels from worst violence in years." The Guardian described "looting that began after protests turned violent."
The state's own police saw something else: young people from the suburbs hunting for loot, in the prefecture's account. Reporters on the ground saw Palestinian flags in Paris, Marseille and Milan. Paris prosecutors have broken down arrests by age and offense; no official has released anything on nationality or legal status. French law narrows what can be measured: the Conseil constitutionnel ruled in 2007 that studies of the diversity of origins may cover "objective data" but cannot "rest on ethnic origin or race." The silence is policy, not proof, and a country cannot debate what its government refuses to see.
Macron's words, Macron's results
At Les Mureaux in October 2020, Macron said: "What we must attack is Islamist separatism. It is a conscious, theorized, political-religious project." He pledged "to build at last an Islam in France that can be an Islam of the Enlightenment," according to the Élysée transcript.
Immigrants made up 9.7% of France's population in 2017, Macron's first year in office, and 11.6% in 2025, according to INSEE, the national statistics agency, which notes a change of method in 2024.
Execution rates for orders to leave French territory have stayed "below 7% since 2020," according to Interior Ministry and Cour des comptes data cited in a written question to the National Assembly.
His 2021 law against separatism has fared no better. A Senate committee found that "the most frequently used provisions are not used to fight religious separatism" and that the law imposed "new administrative obligations for the good guys and a remarkable freedom for the bad guys," the Senate said.
His 2024 immigration law was gutted before it took effect. The Conseil constitutionnel struck all or part of 35 of its 86 articles, including limits on family reunification, a residence requirement for welfare benefits and changes to nationality law.
An Islam of the Enlightenment was promised. Burned town halls were delivered.
Le Pen's compromise
Marine Le Pen blamed "politicized vandals from the suburbs" for the weekend, Le Figaro reported. Yet the leader of the French right has twice said Islam has its place in the Republic.
"Is Islam compatible with the Republic? It is for Muslims to answer. I believe so. An Islam as we have known it, secularized, yes," she said on TF1 in September 2016, TF1 Info reported.
In the April 2022 presidential debate, she said: "I am not fighting a religion, I am not fighting Islam, which is a religion that has its full place; I am fighting the Islamist ideology that attacks the foundation of our republic," France Inter reported.
That is the creed of the secular Republic, not of France. The Church teaches otherwise.
"The unicity of the Church founded by him must be firmly believed as a truth of Catholic faith," the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith declared in Dominus Iesus, No. 16.
The Catechism, No. 2105, restates "the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one Church of Christ," and calls Christians to "make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and apostolic Church."
Pope Pius XI taught in Quas Primas that "not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honor and obedience to Christ."
France knows this. At Le Bourget in 1980, Pope John Paul II asked: "France, eldest daughter of the Church, are you faithful to the promises of your baptism?" according to the Vatican. A politician who answers that question with laïcité has already answered it.
Meloni, in word and deed
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni ran on firmness. "In Italy, one enters only legally," she said in August 2022, Secolo d'Italia reported.
Sea arrivals did fall after a 2023 surge: 105,131 in 2022, 157,651 in 2023, 66,617 in 2024, 66,306 in 2025 and 24,583 this year through Oct. 15, according to the Interior Ministry.
The front door, however, swung wider. Her government authorized 452,000 work entries for 2023 through 2025, according to the Labor Ministry, and 497,550 more for 2026 through 2028, according to the government decree. Italy granted citizenship to a record 217,000 foreign residents in 2024, according to the national statistics agency, ISTAT, and 196,000 in 2025.
Prefect Claudio Galzerano, the Interior Ministry's central director of immigration and border police, stated the policy plainly at the Global Security Forum in Doha, in a clip posted by Disclose.tv. "We are combating illegal migration and we are endorsing supporting legal paths of migration," he said.
Milan
Police arrested 28 people after Oct. 17 cost-of-living marches in several cities, including 12 minors and six foreigners, and 141 officers were injured, according to Italpress, citing the Public Security Department. In Milan, where about 5,000 people marched, 17 were arrested, five of them minors, and 104 officers were injured. The Milan marchers, "almost all very young," carried "Palestinian and Italian flags," TG La7 reported.
"To demonstrate is a right. To lay our cities to waste is not," Meloni said, the BBC reported.
What a nation may ask
The Church does not ask nations to dissolve. The Catechism, No. 2241, teaches: "Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants' duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens."
France's bishops called on everyone "not to be drawn into the spiral of this deadly violence: our country deserves better than this," the Bishops' Conference of France said.
It does. It deserves rulers who know what France is.
