A French court has ordered a small town to remove a statue of the Virgin Mary, saying the religious display violates the separation of church and state, reports RFI.
The statue is located at a crossroads in La Flotte, a municipality of 2,800 inhabitants on the popular holiday island Île de Ré, off France's Atlantic coast.
The statue was erected by a local family after World War II in gratitude for a father and son having returned from the conflict alive.
Its initial home was a private garden, but the family later donated it to the town which set it up at the crossroads in 1983.
In 2020, it was damaged by a passing car, and the local authorities decided to restore the statue and put it back in the same place, but this time on an elevated platform.