Up to 350 people marched against what they called “Christianophobia” after France’s highest administrative court the State Council ruled the cross violated a 1905 secularist law imposing strict separation of church and state.
The statue shows the former Pope in prayer and is located in a car park in Ploërmel near Brittany in north west France.
The court ruled in October that while the statue of the Pope and the arch under which he is standing could remain, the cross must be taken down “within the next six months”.
The decision to remove the cross, which was gifted to the the town in 2006, has sparked outrage among conservatives, who have pledged to fight to save the monument and took to the streets yesterday.
Protesters, which included members of the group ‘Don’t touch my cross’ and Front National, brandished placards that read “Stop Christianophobia” and “Chase Christianism and you’ll get Islam,” according to local police, who added that the march was “largely peaceful”.
Ploërmel’s right-wing mayor, Patrick Le Diffon, refused to join the protests, calling instead for a “peaceful solution” to the decade-long legal battle to be found.
The court’s decision also triggered a flurry of criticism in Poland, the late pontiff’s native country, and prompted Beata Szydło, Poland’s prime minister, to offer to give the 7.5-metre-high statue a new home to save it from the “dictates of political correctness”.
She said: “Our great Pole, a great European, is a symbol of a Christian, united Europe.”
Louis Aliot, the Front National’s vice-president, said in a statement the “iniquitous” decision could speed up the “destruction of our Judeo-Christian society”.