A far-left French presidential candidate has called for the removal and imprisonment of a military chaplain from his role after a video surfaced of the priest stating that “leftists” should calm down. The chaplain, who has not been officially named, was speaking in a homily to the 3rd Marine Infantry Parachute Regiment of Carcassonne on October 7, 2025.

Speaking at Carcassonne’s Saint-Michel Cathedral, the priest urged the soldiers to “have courage” and criticised the French establishment as being “incompetent”. The video appears to have been recorded clandestinely without the priest’s knowledge.

“I say this because we are with our family and no one is recording,” the priest said in the video, where he described the men and women “who died so that France would be a beautiful country, so that architects could continue to build basilicas, cathedrals, cities, fortified castles".

“And instead of putting knights, we put incompetents. We put people who eat seed, people who lecture everyone, ideologues," he said.

"I encourage you, my dear friends, to continue to fight, to continue to have the courage of your convictions, as I am trying to do at this Mass," he added. "It's up to you to say: 'Calm down leftists, shhh, breathe through your nose!'”

He encouraged those present to “Keep fighting. Keep having this courage. Keep having this faith. Otherwise, we will be ridiculed”.

“Otherwise, this beautiful country that is France will be mocked, and others will take our place. It is the law of the strongest that will reign. And others will take the place of our values.”

Franceinfo reported that the Ministry of the Armed Forces considered the remarks to have been “inappropriate”, stating that there were “obligations of reserve and political neutrality imposed on all members of the institution, including military chaplains".

The publication stated that the priest had apologised publicly at the end of his homily and at the end of the Mass, as well as “in writing to the elected officials who had shown their disapproval”.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is a candidate in the 2027 French presidential election and previously served as the president of the La France Insoumise parliamentary group, reacted to the video on X.

“Assuming that such a speech has its place in the Catholic Church, it has none in the French army. Its place is in prison for racist insults and seditious remarks,” he said.

“The participants in this disgusting rally that makes it laugh, and those who remained in place, must be identified and neutralised in their potential military role. There are places, roles, and professions where such behaviours have no place, and we must tolerate no exceptions.”

Mélenchon, who was previously a member of the Trotskyite Internationalist Communist Organisation and the Socialist Party, has run for president three times before the upcoming election in 2012, 2017 and 2022.

Earlier this year, Mélenchon drew media attention for his public support of demographic shifts amongst the French population, which he described as the “great replacement”.

"We need municipal elections that can be a demonstration of the level of political consciousness of the French people in their diversity, of the ability of our lists to embody the new France, that of the great replacement, that of the generation that replaces the other because it has been like this since the dawn of time,” he said.

The Diocese of Carcassonne-Narbonne told Franceinfo that it “usually lends Saint-Michel Cathedral on different occasions” and that as the regiment was located in the immediate vicinity of the cathedral, “it is also customary for this celebration in honour of Saint Michael, their patron saint, to be hosted there." The publication reported that the Diocese of the French Armed Forces did not respond to its request for comment.