Looting in France: What does the Church say?

Dalida Gaoua had reopened her bakery in Paris just two weeks earlier after renovations. On October 17, rioters broke down the door and ransacked the shop. On French television, she said through tears that they were just a bakery, not representatives of big capital.

Her words sum up what happened in many European cities that weekend. The violence hit not the powerful, but often the small. And no sooner had the broken glass been swept up than a second dispute began: the fight over interpretation. Were they far-left extremists? Migrants? A lost generation of youth? Anyone browsing the internet found thousands of voices for each of these answers, all claiming to know for certain.

This article gathers together what is known about the events and asks what standard the Catholic Church offers for judging them.

What happened

In France, students had begun protesting in late September against overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings. Within a few weeks, this developed into a nationwide movement against the high cost of living, carried by unions, the Yellow Vests and student organizations. On October 17, around 550,000 people took to the streets, according to the Interior Ministry.

On the fringes of these demonstrations, riots broke out on a scale not seen before. According to the French Trade Minister, around 3,000 shops were damaged or looted that day. In Limoges, the historic town hall burned; in Marseille, unknown individuals broke into the city hall; in several cities, police stations and prefectures were attacked. Hundreds of police officers were injured, and thousands of people were arrested.

In Italy, protests against the high cost of living and poor public services escalated the same weekend, especially in Milan. Masked individuals looted shops around the cathedral and clashed violently with police. The age of those arrested was striking: according to the news agency Ansa, around 80 percent of them were minors. Prime Minister Meloni criticized that legitimate demonstrations were being exploited for violence and chaos. A week later, Milan remained calm under a massive police presence, while renewed clashes broke out in Turin, Bologna and Rome.

Who were the perpetrators?

The French government took an early stance. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and President Macron blamed primarily ultra-left groups, which they said had been joined by numerous criminals. One mayor spoke of a trained Black Bloc.

The initial investigations paint a more nuanced picture. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau stated that she could not confirm that the perpetrators of violence were politically affiliated with the far left. The vast majority of those arrested remain silent and give no political motives. Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus of the Fondation Jean Jaurès speaks of opportunistic offenders who came to help themselves in shops that had already been broken into. However, he also points out that experienced activists are rarely caught, so the figures may be skewed.

No one disputes that far-left groups were present and sought confrontation with the police. According to experts, however, they primarily target banks, insurance companies and other symbols of capitalism, rarely small shops. The Neue Zürcher Zeitung describes how violent looters and far-left extremists hijacked the originally peaceful student protests. Early trial reports from France also suggest that many of the looters have a migration background, as do many of their victims.

The overall picture, then, is a mixture: far-left extremists, criminals, frustrated youths, and bystanders lured in through social media. Investigations are still ongoing. Anyone who already claims to know who did it knows more than the public prosecutor's office.

Violence is not protest

For Catholic social teaching, one thing is clear from the outset: violence is not a legitimate means of politics. In 1979, in Drogheda, Ireland, in the midst of the Northern Ireland conflict, John Paul II said that violence is an evil, unworthy of man, and a lie, because it contradicts the truth of faith and of humanity. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church explicitly takes up this idea.

This is true even when the concern is legitimate. Good schools, affordable living, and fair wages have been core themes of Catholic social teaching since the encyclical Rerum Novarum of 1891. The Church takes seriously the hardship behind the protests. But no social grievance justifies destroying a baker's shop. It is precisely the poor and small business owners who pay the highest price when looting becomes a form of protest.

Then there is the seventh commandment. The Catechism of the Catholic Church treats theft and the willful destruction of others' property as wrongdoing (CCC 2408–2409) and requires restitution for damage caused (CCC 2412). Already Rerum Novarum rejected the idea that social injustice could be remedied by seizing the property of others.

No Collective Punishment

Equally clear is the second principle: guilt is personal. Christian morality knows no collective guilt. Whoever loots is responsible for his own act—not his family, not his group of origin, not his religious community, and not the political camp to which he belongs.

This has an uncomfortable consequence for all sides. The Church does not judge violence by its political color. A Black Bloc from the left is no less reprehensible than a mob from the right. Whoever downplays left-wing violence because its goals are supposedly good becomes just as untrustworthy as someone who draws conclusions about all migrants from the acts of individual perpetrators. The Vatican's Pastoral Orientations on Migrant Ministry of 2022 explicitly warn against portraying migrants in public discourse in a sweeping, undifferentiated way rather than objectively.

Migration: Welcome and Order

Even though the riots were not migrant protests, they have once again fueled the debate over migration in Germany. On this, the Church holds a position that fits no political camp.

The Catechism (No. 2241) begins with a duty: wealthier nations are obliged to welcome foreigners seeking security and a livelihood, to the extent that they are able. In the same section, it grants states the right to make immigration subject to legal conditions for the sake of the common good. And it names the duties of immigrants: to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the host country, to obey its laws, and to assist in carrying civic burdens.

John Paul II affirmed this line in 2003 in Ecclesia in Europa (No. 101). Authorities are to manage migration with a view to the common good. Welcome must respect the law and, where necessary, be accompanied by firm punishment of abuses. At the same time, the same pope emphasized before the World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants in 1985 that genuine integration respects people's personalities and roots and demands neither isolation nor complete absorption into the majority.

Pope Leo XIV continues this line. In April 2026, he said that a state has the right to set rules at its borders. During his visit to the Canary Islands, he likewise called for safe and legal pathways for migration and warned against growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming graveyards.

Has Germany Reached Its Limit?

The phrase “to the extent that they are able” is key to a question that concerns many readers: has Europe, has Germany taken in more than it can bear? The question is legitimate, and asking it does not contradict the Church. Catholic teaching recognizes a limit to capacity for reception.

Several things suggest overload. In the Robert Bosch Stiftung's 2026 German School Barometer, more than half of teachers describe violence in schools as a major or very major problem, and nearly one in two cite student behavior as their greatest burden. Municipalities have complained for years about a lack of housing and daycare spots. Those who argue this way can point out that the Church explicitly ties reception to regulation and the enforcement of law. A state that takes in more than it can integrate will ultimately fail even those it has taken in.

Yet there is also much to counter this. Teacher shortages, deferred maintenance, and pressure on social welfare systems have causes that predate recent waves of displacement: demographics, austerity policies, a shortage of skilled workers. The fact that students in France are currently protesting over precisely such conditions shows that the problem cannot be explained by migration alone. A large share of those seeking protection in recent years, moreover, came from Ukraine and barely appear in asylum statistics. And the numbers have fallen sharply: in 2015, just over 476,000 people filed asylum applications in Germany; in 2025, it was just under 169,000, and in September 2026 initial applications were about 40 percent below the same month the previous year.

The Church's magisterium deliberately does not specify exactly where the line lies. It offers principles: welcome, order, the common good, dignity. The concrete measure is a matter of political prudence, on which Catholics may legitimately disagree. What is not Catholic is declaring one's own political answer to be the only Christian one, regardless of the direction it points.

What Scripture contributes

Two Bible passages are too rarely read together in this debate. The prophet Jeremiah writes to the Israelites deported to Babylon that they should seek the welfare of the city to which they were brought and pray for it (Jer 29:7). Strangers thus share responsibility for the place where they live. The law of Israel, in turn, obliges natives to treat the foreigner as a native and to love him as themselves, for Israel too was once a stranger in Egypt (Lev 19:34).

Read together, both passages produce the picture that the Catechism also draws: living together is not a one-way street. And Jeremiah's call applies these days also to the young people in Paris and Milan, whatever their families' origin: seek the welfare of your city, not its destruction.

Zacchaeus: mercy that establishes justice

How does one combine clear condemnation with Christian hope? The Gospel of Luke tells of Zacchaeus, the hated tax collector of Jericho (Lk 19:1–10). Jesus goes to his house without condemning him beforehand. And Zacchaeus responds with the promise to repay fourfold what he had wrongly taken.

The story shows that mercy does not abolish wrongdoing but leads to its restitution. For how to deal with the riots, this means: perpetrators must be identified and punished, with names and faces, not as a category. Victims are entitled to protection and compensation. And society should keep a path of conversion open to young offenders, rather than writing off entire groups.

Conclusion

The events in France and Italy do not lend themselves to simple narratives. They show genuine social hardship, organized political violence, and plain criminality, all at the same time. Catholic teaching offers no single culprit here, but it does offer a standard. Violence and looting are wrong, no matter who commits them. Guilt is personal. Migration demands both welcome and order at once, and the right measure may be debated.

Compassion must not become an excuse for wrongdoing, nor must wrongdoing become a pretext for blanket rejection.

To listen further: the Himmelspod episode “When Windows Shatter” takes up these questions. [Insert link to episode]

Sources and fact-checking notes for the article

Before publication, the theological team should verify the flagged points; investigations in France and Italy are still ongoing (as of October 26, 2026).

To be checked before publication

• Verify the Drogheda quote (September 29, 1979) and the reference in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (No. 496) against the original text
• Check CCC 2408 f. and 2412 (seventh commandment, restitution) word for word
• Check Bible passages against the Einheitsübersetzung if quoted verbatim
• Statement about looters with a migration background: comes from initial trial reports (Aargauer Zeitung); check against more recent investigation results before printing
• Name and quote of the Parisian baker: stated publicly on television (TF1), according to Tagesspiegel; anonymize if necessary
• Insert mutual links to the podcast episode and the article

Sources on the events

• Tagesspiegel, October 19, 2026: How could the protests in France escalate like this?
• Euronews, October 23, 2026: Ultra-left as scapegoat?
• Euronews, October 18, 2026: Shops and merchants clean up
• Blick, October 25, 2026: Report from Paris
• NZZ, October 18, 2026: The students only played a supporting role
• NZZ: Interview with Gilles Kepel
• NZZ, October 25, 2026: Gen Z socialism takes to the streets
• Aargauer Zeitung, October 20, 2026: These are the perpetrators of violence and rioters
• ZDFheute, October 19, 2026: Riots in Milan
• Handelsblatt, October 19, 2026: Meloni wants to respond with a decree
• Südtirol News, October 25, 2026: Milan calms down, escalation elsewhere

Sources on schools and migration

• German School Barometer 2026 (report)
• bpb: Asylum applications in Germany
• Initial asylum applications, September 2026
• Pope Leo XIV on states' right to border regulations, April 2026
• Pope Leo XIV in the Canary Islands

Church sources

• Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2241
• John Paul II, Ecclesia in Europa, No. 101
• John Paul II, Address to the World Congress on the Pastoral Care of Migrants, October 17, 1985
• Pastoral Orientations on Intercultural Migrant Ministry, 2022
• John Paul II, Address in Drogheda, September 29, 1979; Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, No. 496
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 2408–2412; Leo XIII, Rerum novarum (1891)
• Jer 29:7 · Lev 19:34 · Lk 19:1–10