An evangelical community presents itself to supporters at the entrance and exit of the events. Miviludes reports several reports.
The Soulion family was leaving the Olympic judo tournament on the Champ-de-Mars when a female voice came from a bush. “We are all in the body of Jesus Christ!” It’s very hot this Wednesday, July 31, but Gerald, 45, was not hallucinating. His two children heard the same thing. The lady stops in front of them to hand them a small blue booklet.
-Read it, the truth is here.
-But what is it ?
-This is the Olympic program of Jesus Christ!
If you have attended an event since the start of the Games in Paris, you have certainly come across these mysterious people, blue T-shirts on their backs, always positioned around the competition sites, but not inside the perimeter of the Olympic events. Franceinfo, for example, spotted them on Thursday near the Arena Paris La Défense, where swimming is taking place. On Tuesday, a team was positioned in Versailles for the equestrian events. Another was roaming the Stade de France area for the rugby 7s tournament.
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Behind these generous street distributions, there is an acronym that is made up of four letters: CMCI, for VSInternational Christian Missionary Community. Facebook Page describes a “Christian group for prayer, fasting, intercession and edification”It is precisely a global evangelical movement, present in around a hundred countries, and which has several hundred members in France.
“The blue booklet? Yes, it’s us”, confirms to franceinfo Chris-Félix DS, one of the managers of the CMCI in Ile-de-France. “We’re not doing anything wrong, you know. We just want to bring the good word to the millions of people who are there during the Olympics, by connecting with them, he defends himself. We want to share the message of the Gospel with as many people as possible. But this is not proselytism, people have the right to refuse our booklet. If they want to discuss, we discuss; if they don’t want to, it doesn’t matter.” The Interior Ministry confirms that there is nothing wrong with the leafleting operation: “According to the law, the distribution of leaflets on public roads is free and without any obligation to declare.”
Asked by franceinfo, the organizers of Paris 2024 affirm that they have not “no connection with this initiative”. “We even saw them distributing their booklets near the large press center,” notes a source at Paris 2024. The community, on the other hand, is “known” of Miviludes. The Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses claims to franceinfo to have received “12 requests for information and reports since 2015 relating to this church.” The last two reports date back to this year.
In the testimonies received by Miviludes, “There are reports of changes in the behavior of people who attended this church as well as very significant personal investments with an incentive to participate in numerous prayers, a break with those around them, a regular call for donations, the practice of fasting, the prohibition of sexual relations before marriage…”. Moreover, “Some of them mentioned that the followers of this church were young adults, students or young women who had just entered the workforce.”
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“Reports to Miviludes? You tell me, assures one of the CMCI managers, contacted by franceinfo. I am even unpleasantly surprised. Yes, we are conservative Christians, but we live in our times.When I hear complaints about financial exploitation, it surprises me. We only teach the love of God. There is absolutely no sectarian deviation.”
Moreover, it has been more than a year since the VSinternational christian missionary community a highlighted in fluorescent the dates of the Olympic Games. “Strategically, it is an essential event to reach people from all over the world. We decided to republish especially for the occasion the original text written for the first time in 1976 by the founder of the community, theProfessor Zacharias Tanee Fomum”.
THE For example, the title of the text was changed to give it an Olympic content. God’s Love and Forgiveness has thus become The Game of Life. The cover has also undergone a slight facelift: it now shows athletes in action. But the most striking change is insidewith a preface entirely devoted to the Games. Excerpt: “Everyone is enrolled as an athlete from the first day of their existence and will have to play many matches during their life.” In addition to its French version, the famous booklet of around sixty pages has was translated into seven languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Italian, German, Russian… Before being printed in “a few hundred thousand copies.”
Last Thursday, around 7 p.m., Marc showed up at the top of the escalator leading to the Olympic pool: “Ladies and Gentlemen, a free book about our Jesus Christ!”he announced to spectators who were especially impatient to see the swimmer Léon Marchand. “On is placed before the start of the tests or at the exit to be able to capture as many people as possible, explains the thirty-year-old. As soon as the competition starts, we change location. You have to be strategic.” He says he was told off the day before by police officers who thought he was obstructing the arrival of spectators..
Members of the International Christian Missionary Community plan to occupy the grounds until the end of the Olympics.. “If we were doing any harm, we would have been told to leave already, right?”