Between the severance of diplomatic relations with the Holy See and their resumption in 1921, it took seventeen years and a world war.
This is because at the start of the 20th century, secular France was coming back a long way.
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The Vatican, the London building and the scent of scandal
A century after the Concordat of 1801, nothing is working in France between the Republic and the Catholic Church.
The victory of the socialist radicals in 1902 sounded the death knell: the Church was fought step by step, by a strictly secular state.
The tensions had existed since 1880, when the Third Republic had already removed any reference to religion in public education.
Three times condemned
The tension was at its height in 1901, when the state had submitted by law all religious congregations, and especially teaching congregations, to a licensing regime.
This administrative labyrinth full of pitfalls had allowed, for regulatory reasons, the expulsion of men and women religious from the country.
In this context, the recall to Paris, by the Republic, of the ambassador
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