Some Share in the Government: What the Church Asks of France When Its Students Take to the Streets

For more than two weeks, French high school students have blockaded their schools over crumbling buildings and missing teachers. Some of it has turned violent, and on Monday a 15-year-old lost his hand to a police grenade. On Wednesday, the government suspended those grenades and promised the students a plan. Under the arrest counts sits an old question the Church has a clear answer to: what share do the young have in the life of their country, and what do they owe their country in return?

The News Story

France’s government moved on Wednesday, October 7, to calm a student protest movement that has disrupted high schools across the country for more than two weeks. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez told RTL radio that morning that he had suspended police use of stun grenades at the protests. That evening Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said in a televised address that security forces had no orders to confront young people, and that his government would present measures answering student grievances by the end of October.¹

The suspension followed an incident in the northern city of Lens on Monday, October 5, when a 15-year-old lost his hand after picking up a stun grenade fired by police. Nuñez said the pause would last until the facts of that case are established, and that police have opened 18 internal investigations into alleged misconduct since the protests began. In Paris, a police officer was charged on Tuesday after a 14-year-old was struck in the face by a tear gas grenade at close range and lost several teeth.²

The movement began in late September with blockades at lycées, the high schools that serve students aged 15 to 18, in the poorest suburbs of Paris. Students cite crumbling buildings, overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages, absent teachers who go unreplaced, and school days that often run from 8 a.m. into the late afternoon. Within days the protests had spread nationwide. Some turned violent, with schools set on fire, fires lit in the streets and projectiles thrown at police.³

On Tuesday, October 6, teachers’ unions, parents and other trade unions joined the students in the streets. The Interior Ministry counted about 256,000 marchers nationwide, 56,000 of them in Paris; student unions put the total near 450,000. The Union Syndicale Lycéenne said about 1,800 lycées were disrupted or closed that day, and 57 university sites were blockaded or shut. Lecornu then suspended high school classes for the rest of the week, replacing lessons with what he called a “period of internal democracy” in which students and staff could air complaints. President Emmanuel Macron convened an emergency meeting with Lecornu and senior ministers.⁴

The toll is heavy. The Interior Ministry reports 6,100 arrests since the protests began, most of them minors, and the Justice Ministry says more than 1,800 people face prosecution, including 1,483 minors. Lecornu’s office counts at least 215 injured students, 715 injured police officers and gendarmes, and 85 injured teachers and school staff. Arrest totals vary between ministries and outlets, and all figures remain preliminary.⁵

Accounts of who drove the violence differ sharply. Rights groups, students and parents accuse police of disproportionate force against minors. The government says outsiders hijacked the movement and turned it into urban violence. Critics accuse the far-left France Unbowed party of encouraging the unrest. That party’s leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, accuses the government of repressing students. U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that the unrest was about “out of control mass migration.”⁶

The crisis comes as the government presents a cost-cutting 2027 budget, and ahead of next spring’s election to choose Macron’s successor. The government has already dropped a planned enrollment fee for some vocational and preparatory classes. Student unions said Wednesday that Lecornu’s address lacked concrete measures and asked to meet him, and the Union Syndicale Lycéenne called another national day of action for Thursday, October 8.⁷

Catholic Social Teaching Analysis

Two Calls for Democracy

On Tuesday, as an estimated quarter of a million people marched across France, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu canceled high school classes for the rest of the week. In their place he ordered what he called a “period of internal democracy,” time for headteachers, teachers and pupils to talk through what is wrong with their schools. That same afternoon in Strasbourg, Hugo Vetzel, a recent graduate getting ready for university, told Al Jazeera: “When the answer is violence, it means democracy is no longer working. There is such a gap between the elites and us.”⁸

A prime minister and a teenager, standing on opposite sides of a police line, both said France needs more democracy in its schools. The Church has a name for what they are both reaching for, and it is older than the Republic. She calls it participation.

What Thomas Saw in Moses’ Tent

St. Thomas Aquinas asked what makes a government well ordered, and the first thing he named was a share. “Two points are to be observed concerning the right ordering of rulers in a state or nation,” he wrote. “One is that all should take some share in the government: for this form of constitution ensures peace among the people, commends itself to all, and is most enduring.”⁹

He found the pattern in Exodus. Moses sat from morning until evening judging every dispute in Israel by himself, until his father-in-law Jethro stopped him: “What you are doing is not good. You and the people with you will wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you; you are not able to perform it alone” (Exodus 18:17-18). Jethro’s remedy was to choose able men “from all the people” and let them settle the small matters themselves, “so it will be easier for you, and they will bear the burden with you.” Then came the promise: “all this people also will go to their place in peace” (Exodus 18:21-23).

Look at the order. The burden is shared first, and peace follows. France is living the reverse this month. Its students spend their days from 8 in the morning into the late afternoon in buildings they say are falling apart, with little say over any of it, and the peace has gone.

What the Church Means by a Share

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church describes participation as the activities by which a citizen “contributes to the cultural, economic, political and social life of the civil community to which he belongs.” It calls it “a duty to be fulfilled consciously by all, with responsibility and with a view to the common good,” and adds that “it becomes absolutely necessary to encourage participation above all of the most disadvantaged.”¹⁰ These protests began in the poorest suburbs of Paris. That detail matters. The schools in the worst repair tend to sit in the neighborhoods with the weakest political voice, and the Compendium tells a government to start listening there.

It goes further. “Every democracy must be participative,” the Compendium says, and that means “the different subjects of civil community at every level must be informed, listened to and involved.”¹¹ At every level. A lycée is a level. So is a classroom sitting empty because nobody was sent to replace the teacher who is out.

The Catechism brings all of this down to the size of a teenager’s life. Participation is “the voluntary and generous engagement of a person in social interchange,” and “it is necessary that all participate, each according to his position and role, in promoting the common good.” It happens “first of all by taking charge of the areas for which one assumes personal responsibility.”¹² For a 16-year-old, that area is mostly his school. Then the Catechism says something I’d carve over the door of every ministry of education: “Participation begins with education and culture.” It quotes the Second Vatican Council: “One is entitled to think that the future of humanity is in the hands of those who are capable of providing the generations to come with reasons for life and optimism.”¹³

A leaking roof and a timetable full of empty hours give a young person very few reasons for optimism. In their clumsy and sometimes destructive way, the students in the streets are asking for some.

What It Asks of Those Who Govern

Lecornu reached for the right instinct. The education ministry has opened an online platform where every high school pupil can send in grievances until October 23, and the prime minister has promised a plan by the end of the month.¹⁴ Listening is where participation starts.

The Compendium also names the ways a government can keep the form of participation and lose the substance. It warns against a “burgeoning bureaucracy” that “de facto denies citizens the possibility of taking active part in social and political life.”¹⁵ A web form that feeds a report is a beginning. Participation means students can find their own complaints in the plan, with a timeline attached, and hold someone to it. On Wednesday the student unions said they had heard no concrete measures, and asked to meet the prime minister. That meeting would cost Lecornu an afternoon. I think he should take it.

St. John Paul II said authentic democracy needs “the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the ‘subjectivity’ of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility.”¹⁶ A school where pupils have a recognized and answered voice in how it runs is one of those structures. A school whose pupils learn that only a burning bin gets a minister’s attention teaches the opposite lesson, and it will last longer than any blockade.

The same duty governs the State’s use of force against its own children. A 15-year-old in Lens lost his hand to a police stun grenade on Monday, and a 14-year-old in Paris lost several teeth to a tear gas grenade fired at close range. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez was right to suspend those grenades while the cases are investigated.¹⁷

What It Asks of the Students

Participation runs in both directions. The Compendium calls it a duty carried out “with responsibility,” and some of what has happened in the last three weeks fails that test plainly. Schools have been set on fire. Staff have been doused with gasoline. Some 715 police officers and gendarmes and 85 teachers and school staff have been hurt.¹⁸ The Church’s word on this is blunt. Violence “is unacceptable as a solution to problems,” and “violence destroys what it claims to defend: the dignity, the life, the freedom of human beings.”¹⁹ Lecornu put it in plainer terms: “Burning down a high school does not improve the state of high school buildings.”²⁰

Pope Leo XIV had already said as much to France’s young people. On September 25 he held a prayer vigil with them at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, the northern suburb where, within a week, high school and university students would be in the streets demanding substitute teachers and better conditions.²¹ He thanked them for wanting to serve “a peace that helps us grow as men and women by transforming fears into hope, and complaint into responsibility.”²²

Complaint into responsibility. That is participation in three words. Later that night he told them how a Christian fights for what is right: “Our battle is not a battle against others. It does not employ the weapons of violence, contempt or oppression. Our only weapon is that of self-giving love.”²³

Some of the adults have already shown what that looks like. In Paris, parents formed a human chain between pupils and riot police. A Spanish teacher told the Associated Press she joined the blockade “to form a barrier between the police and the students.”²⁴ Those parents and teachers took charge of the area they are responsible for, which is exactly what the Catechism asks.

What I’d Watch

Watch today’s national day of action, and whether the marchers and the police both keep their hands down. Watch whether Lecornu meets the student unions before the month is out. Watch the plan itself: whether it carries real money for buildings and substitute teachers, and a date by which pupils can check the work. And watch the police inspectorate’s findings on Lens.

Then pray. Pray for the boy in Lens and his family, and for every injured student, teacher and officer. Pray for the parents and teachers standing in the street between their children and the shields. Pray for Prime Minister Lecornu and his ministers, that they listen long enough to act well. And pray for the young people Pope Leo called “the saints of France,” that they turn their complaint into responsibility and their anger into something they can build.²⁵

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This story turns on participation: every citizen, the young included, has the right and the duty to share in the life of the community, and those who govern owe that share a real form.

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Notes

1. ↑ “French leaders say they’re listening to students. Will it be enough?,” CNN, October 7, 2026, cnn.com; “French student unions demand talks with Lecornu as PM seeks to ease tensions,” France 24, October 7, 2026, france24.com; “France halts police use of stun grenades at student protests,” Al Jazeera, from AFP and Reuters, October 7, 2026, aljazeera.com.
2. ↑ Al Jazeera, “France halts police use of stun grenades”; Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes as protesters clash with police,” Al Jazeera, with Reuters, October 6, 2026, aljazeera.com; Zane Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets in French lycée protests,” The Connexion, October 6, 2026, updated October 7, 2026, connexionfrance.com.
3. ↑ Nicolas Garriga and John Leicester, “Student protests grip France as Prime Minister Lecornu calls crisis meeting,” Associated Press via PBS News, October 1, 2026, pbs.org; Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes”; Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets.”
4. ↑ Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets”; Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes”; Al Jazeera, “France halts police use of stun grenades.”
5. ↑ Al Jazeera, “France halts police use of stun grenades”; Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes”; Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets.”
6. ↑ Al Jazeera, “France halts police use of stun grenades”; Garriga and Leicester, “Student protests grip France”; “France riots intensify as experts shed light on far-left forces fueling unrest,” Fox News, accessed October 8, 2026, foxnews.com; Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes.”
7. ↑ Garriga and Leicester, “Student protests grip France”; Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets”; France 24, “French student unions demand talks”; CNN, “French leaders say they’re listening.”
8. ↑ Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes.”
9. ↑ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 105, a. 1, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, in New Advent, newadvent.org.
10. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), no. 189, vatican.va.
11. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 190.
12. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), nos. 1913-1914, vatican.va.
13. ↑ Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1917.
14. ↑ Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets”; Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes.”
15. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 191.
16. ↑ Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus: On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, May 1, 1991), no. 46, vatican.va.
17. ↑ Al Jazeera, “France halts police use of stun grenades.”
18. ↑ Garriga and Leicester, “Student protests grip France”; Al Jazeera, “France halts police use of stun grenades”; Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets.”
19. ↑ Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium, no. 496.
20. ↑ Al Jazeera Staff, “France suspends high school classes.”
21. ↑ Garriga and Leicester, “Student protests grip France.”
22. ↑ Pope Leo XIV, Address at the Prayer Vigil with Young People, Apostolic Journey to France (Stade de France, Saint-Denis, September 25, 2026), vatican.va.
23. ↑ Pope Leo XIV, Address at the Prayer Vigil with Young People.
24. ↑ Lilley, “Hundreds of thousands take to streets”; Garriga and Leicester, “Student protests grip France.”
25. ↑ Pope Leo XIV, Address at the Prayer Vigil with Young People.

Books Cited

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• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Latin-English edition, Complete Set (Aquinas Institute / Emmaus Academic, 2012)
• Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition (Doubleday / Image, 2003)