From the desk of Paul
Belien on Mon, 2006-03-27 13:35
One of the rare
Belgian churches that is packed every weekend is the church of Saint Anthony of
Padova in Montignies-sur-Sambre, one of the poorest suburbs of Charleroi, a
derelict rust belt area to the south of Brussels. Holy Mass in Montignies is
conducted in Latin and lasts up to four hours. Yesterday over 2,000 people
attended the service by Father Samuel (Père Samuel). The priest’s sermon dealt with his
persecution. The Belgian authorities are bringing the popular priest to court
on charges of racism.
Father Samuel has
been prosecuted for “incitement to racist hatred” by
the Belgian government’s inquisition agency, the so-called Centre for Equal
Opportunities and Opposition to Racism (CEOOR), because of a remark he made in a 2002 television interview
when he said:
“Every thoroughly islamized Muslim child that is born in Europe is a time bomb for Western children in the future. The latter will be persecuted when they have become a minority.”
Père Samuel
Last Thursday
the Belgian judiciary decided that the priest will have to stand trial before
the penal court in Charleroi. He reacted
by repeating his time bomb statement and added that he would be honoured if he
had to go to jail for speaking his mind. He added that Jesus, too, had been
convicted. During yesterday’s sermon
he called upon the faithful to accompany him to court. “We will turn this into
an excursion, driving there in full buses.”
Father Samuel’s
passport gives his name as Charles-Clément Boniface. That is not entirely
correct. He was born in 1942 in Midyat, Turkey, as Samuel Ozdemir. The latter
is a surname the priest dislikes because, he explains, it was imposed on his
family by the Turks. Samuel was a Christian: “At home we spoke Aramaic, the
language of Jesus.” The Aramaics are a Catholic minority in Syria and Turkey.
They speak an old Semitic language, which Jesus and the apostles used and which
Mel Gibson had his actors use in his movie The Passion of the Christ.
Young Samuel
became a Catholic priest. In the mid-1970s he fled to Belgium, claiming that
the Aramaic Christians were being persecuted in Turkey. He became a Belgian and
adopted the surname of Boniface – “he who does good things.” He was appointed
to the diocese of Tournai, but soon became caught up in the culture war between
Christians and secularists. Tournai is a thoroughly secularised, modernist
diocese. Father Samuel clashed with the bishop, who suspended him in 2001. He
then bought the St-Antoine-de-Padoue church in Montignies-sur-Sambre. There he
conducts the Mass according to the traditional rites of the Catholic Church.
Hundreds of
faithful from all over the country and even from the north of France attend
Sunday Mass in Montignies-sur-Sambre. The congregation includes African
immigrants, a large number of young people and many young families with small
children. In his sermons and on his website Father Samuel speaks out against secularism,
but also fights on another front of the three-way culture war, warning against
“the islamic invasion” of the West. He
says he has witnessed in Turkey what the future has in store for Europe. He
claims Muslims are invading Europe and warns for an impending civil war.
According to Father Samuel “so-called moderate Muslims do not exist.”