page_title: Fédération Nationale Catholique
section_title: Early success
hierarchical_section_title: Fédération Nationale Catholique / Early success
caption_attribution_description: Édouard de Castelnau
context_page_description: The Fédération Nationale Catholique was a French movement that was active in the 1920s and 1930s, with the purpose of defending the Catholic Church against secular trends in the governments of the time. The Federation was founded in 1924 in response to the election of a left-wing government with a secularist policy. After rapidly gaining members and staging large demonstrations, it soon achieved its goal of maintaining the status quo separation between church and state. The movement gradually lost momentum in the years that followed, although it remained in existence during the Vichy regime.
context_section_description: In the Federation's official bulletin, le Point de direction, Castelnau hammered home the importance of unity of all Catholics.
  The first national congress was held in February 1925, by which time there were more than two million members.
  On 10 March 1925 the cardinals and archbishops of France published a declaration attacking "the so-called laws of secularism". 
  The church leaders told their congregations to "declare war upon laicism and its principles" until the anti-Catholic laws were repealed.
  The Federation held rallies and staged demonstrations, some with up to 100,000 participants. 
  The movement gained its first martyrs on 9 February 1925 in Marseille, 
  when armed gangs attacked a meeting of Federation members and two were killed.
  The victims were given an impressive funeral, which served to demonstrate the power of the movement and discourage further attempts at intimidation.
  The Cartel des Gauches was forced to reverse course in 1925, returning to the status quo in which France had an embassy in the Vatican, and Alsace-Lorraine had confessional schools, but where otherwise the church and state were rigidly separated. This compromise held until Marshal Philippe Pétain took power in 1940.
caption: General Édouard de Curières de Castelnau, founder of the Federation
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