In the context of the agricultural mobilization that has kept the A64 highway blocked for days, in southern France, a group of farmers decided to celebrate the Christmas Mass right at the protest site, staying on the road during the night of December 24 instead of returning home.
The initiative took place in Carbonne, south of Toulouse, and also in Briscous, where the participants in the movement—known as the Ultras de l’A64—set up provisional tents to shelter from the cold and organized the Christmas Eve dinner there. The food, donated by neighbors and sympathizers, included traditional products like oysters, capon, foie gras, and Christmas sweets. The surplus was later delivered to charitable associations.
A Mass in Exceptional Conditions
On the night of December 24, a Nativity Mass was celebrated under a large tent installed on the asphalt, with a provisional altar and no other setting than that of the highway itself. In Briscous, the celebration was presided over by Father Vincent Morandi, priest of Biarritz, who came at the request of the mobilized farmers.
The liturgical celebrations took place with the texts, songs, and prayers proper to Christmas, in an unusual context, marked by a social protest that was not interrupted even on the night of Christ’s birth.
The Background of the Agricultural Conflict
The mobilized farmers are protesting against the government’s management of contagious nodular dermatosis, a bovine disease that, they denounce, is being addressed through massive livestock slaughter policies that threaten the viability of many farms.
Days before, the bishop of Bayonne, Lescar, and Oloron, Monsignor Marc Aillet, had publicly expressed his support for the farmers. In a statement dated December 15, the prelate denounced the human and social consequences of these measures, defended alternatives such as selective slaughter and preventive vaccination, and also warned about other pressures on the rural world, such as the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur. The bishop framed the agricultural crisis in terms of human dignity, social justice, and the common good, recalling the high rates of poverty and suicide in the sector.
A Contrast with Other Recent Liturgical Uses
The celebration of this outdoor Mass in a protest context contrasts with other recent episodes known in the ecclesiastical sphere, such as the case of a Christmas Mass celebrated with animals inside the presbytery in a parish in Boadilla (Spain). In the French case, although it is an extraordinary setting, the liturgy took place without elements foreign to the altar or improper interferences, adapting to the circumstances without altering the sacred character of the rite, keeping the animals to the side of the presbytery.
The Christmas Eve experienced on the A64 will remain as a singular episode: a Christmas celebrated far from temples and homes, in the midst of a protest that its protagonists consider vital for their survival.
@ladepechedumidi Un prêtre a improvisé une messe de Noël sur l’autoroute A64, que les agriculteurs bloquent depuis le 12 décembre contre la politique gouvernementale de gestion de la dermatose bovine. La cérémonie a reuni environ 500 personnes. #noel #agriculture #insolite #apprendresurtiktok #manifestation