France’s largest Masonic order has opened a campaign against private schools that operate outside State contract, saying they have no place in the Republic.
Guillaume Trichard, returned to the grand mastership of the Grand Orient de France (GODF) at its convent in Bordeaux, southwest France, on August 28, set out the position in an interview with Le Figaro. He said the order would publish a white paper on the school of the Republic within weeks.
Such schools receive no regular State funding, which leaves them freer over curriculum and hiring, though they remain subject to inspection and to the national common core.
About 2,665 are operating this academic year, teaching some 140,000 pupils, according to the association Créer son école.
Catholic schools account for roughly a quarter of that total, according to the Fondation pour l’école, most of the rest being non-denominational. The dependence runs the other way, though: almost all traditional Catholic schooling in France sits outside contract, including dozens of schools tied to the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter and the Society of St Pius X.
Columnist Gabrielle Cluzel argued in Boulevard Voltaire that the sector was under attack precisely because it is, in substance, a Catholic one.
Trichard presented France’s assisted dying law as evidence that his order’s positions eventually reach the statute book. It was promulgated on August 18, weeks after a reception planned to mark its adoption drew criticism over the use of public money.
The GODF’s 1,400 lodges have each been asked to stage a public act before the next convent, including talks in schools and universities. A wider manifesto covering France, Europe and the world is due in early 2027.
It has moved against Catholic education before. In July 2025 it was one of 24 secular and Masonic bodies that signed a statement against the opening of the Académie Saint-Louis de Chalès, a Catholic boarding school for boys in the Sologne, central France, backed by the businessman Pierre-Édouard Stérin.
The signatories argued that its model of integral education amounted to indoctrination. The Orléans-Tours education authority cleared the school that month and it opened in September 2025.
There has been friction elsewhere. The Prytanée national militaire at La Flèche, western France, listed enrolment at a non-contract school among the eliminating criteria for its officer preparatory classes, prompting a legal challenge by parents in July.
The Ministry of the Armed Forces confirmed on September 11 that it had circulated a directive requiring candidates to be judged on merit alone, though the text has not been published.
The quarrel is an old one. In the fiches affair of 1904-1905, Grand Orient lodges supplied the War Ministry with information on officers’ religious practice, used to block the promotion of those deemed too Catholic.
