Historic French Masonic Hall Vandalized for Third Time in Seven Years

Photo: Myriam Tieulent's Facebook page

by Christopher Hodapp

As I've been warning for months, anti-Masonry would doubtless accompany the rise in anti-Semitic rage and hate crimes around the Western world.

Concorde et Persévérance Lodge is a historic lodge affiliated with the Grand Orient de France (GODF). Located in Vienne, in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of southeastern France, and founded originally in 1781 under the name "La Concorde," it is one of the oldest lodges in the country. The Masonic hall was vandalized on the night of July 31st. Windows were broken, Nazi swastikas and SS symbols were painted on the entrance, along with anti-Jewish slogans, insults, death threats, the 666 ('Mark of the Beast'), and phrases like "Death to pedos" ("Mort aux pedos"), as in "pedophiles." (Inexplicably, Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein's names were also tagged on the building in this pastiche of paranoia and hatred.) In front of the main door to the building, there was also painted a curious symbol and phrase, "The sun will rise."

This appears to be a variation of the Black Sun, or Schwarze Sonne, an emblem used by some radical neo-Nazi, supremacist and identity groups. The symbol originated at the notorious Wewelsburg castle, Heinrich Himmler's private ceremonial center for the elite officers of the SS. It's made up of the stylized double lightning bolt symbols of the SS.

Nazi ideology regarded Freemasons with as much hatred they reserved for Jews. Hitler himself said, "all Jews are Freemasons; all Freemasons are Jews," likely because of the Old Testament Solomon's Temple story that makes up the Masonic degrees. 

According to the www.vivre-villes.fr website, a door was damaged and a window smashed, but the attacker(s) didn't manage to get into the building, unlike in the 2019 incident. Blood was found on the broken window, so at least one of the vandals managed to slice himself. If authorities care enough to spend a little time and money on it, a DNA test might trace the blood to the attacker's identity. If they care.

This same lodge hall was attacked twice in 2019, and again in 2024. In the previous incidents, the building was broken into and furniture and other items were damaged, stolen or destroyed. It's unknown as to whether the two incidents are related, but the attacks all featured anti-Masonic and Nazi-related symbols. Whether the vandal involved is himself a Neo-Nazi, or simply a fanboy of Neo-Nazi hate groups is hard to say. But these are clearly escalating threats and must be taken deadly seriously.

In a statement to the press, local town councilwoman Myriam Tieulent condemned the attack, pointing out that this historic lodge was severely damaged 80 years ago by Vichy pro-Nazi supporters during World War II.

"I am shocked and worried to see that these are Nazi tags," she said. "They [recall] the horror of the Hitler regime, responsible for the genocide of Jews throughout Europe, and have no place in our city or in our Republic." 

"For several months we have been observing the multiplication of racist tags and stickers that defile the walls of our city, she added. "It is time for city hall and the police to act so that our city is no longer stained by symbols of an ideology that led to the Shoah."

Mme. Tieulent was the only local government official to speak out against the attack. Local police are investigating.

Two Masonic Halls Destroyed in Rioting on Pacific Island of New Caledonia

by Christopher Hodapp

As reported on June 2nd on the Hiram.be website, two Masonic temples in the Ducos peninsula area of the Pacific island French territory of New Caledonia were destroyed by fire earlier this week. There has been widespread rioting going on across New Caledonia in recent weeks, especially in and around the capitol city of Noumea. It's difficult to ascertain if these two Masonic halls were the target of a specifically anti-Masonic arsonist, because there have been so many other fires set recently on shops, homes, factories, hospitals and churches around the region. 

At least 6 people have died in the riots since mid-May, and the sight of roadblocks and burning cars have been reported in the press. 

New Caledonia is a French-run island that sits about 700 miles east of Australia, and lodges of the three largest French grand lodges are at work there: Grand Orient de France (GOdF), Grand Loge de France (GLdF), and the more widely recognized Grande Loge Nationale Française (GLNF). 

The local mayor described Noumea as a "city under seige." More than 3,000 foreign tourists have been trapped there for weeks, and the airport has been closed. Between 600 and 1,000 French gendarmes were sent to New Caledonia last month to attempt to stop the ongoing violence.

NOTE: I'm uncertain which Masonic halls were actually destroyed. Area Masons, or French-speaking brethren — please help me fill in the details I don't have.

According to a letter posted by the Grand Orient's Grand Master Guillaume Trichard, (if I'm translating this right), there are 8 GOdF Masonic lodges at work in New Caledonia. His letter says the two destroyed halls are the Eugène Porcheron Masonic Temple and the Jean Unger Masonic Temple. 

Regardless of which lodges and under whose jurisdiction they fall, the damage to the two Masonic halls is shown on the clocherobecourt.com website HERE. One temple's burned out main lodge room can be seen in the photo at the top of this post.

The other destroyed Masonic hall's gutted lodge room in the photo below:

No word yet about potential suspects.

During World War II, New Caledonia's Ducos peninsula was home to an important allied naval base at the port near the capital city of Noumea. All of the island's inhabitants hold French citizenship. While there have been several attempts to split from France in recent decades, at least three independence resolutions have failed by slim majorities. The current clashes are between pro-France and pro-Independence supporters.

(All photos from https://www-clocherobecourt.com)

Grand Orient of Italy Wins Court Battle Against Italian Senate Over Mussolini's Confiscation of Their HQ

Photo: Wikipedia Commons

by Christopher Hodapp

The Grande Oriente d'Italia (Grand Orient of Italy) has prevailed in an Italian Supreme Court ruling against the government that restores ownership of their former headquarters. The historic Palazzo Giustiniani was illegally seized in 1925 by dictator Benito Mussolini's Fascist government ,and was never returned to the Masons after the end of World War II. Since that time, the magnificent 16th century palazzo with its beautiful interior frescos has housed the offices of the Senate of the Republic, and is the residence of the President of the Senate.

The landmark decision was handed down on January 26th, and recognizes the fact that the fascist state confiscated the Masons' historic property without any due process, recompense or restitution whatsoever. The verdict comes just one year short of the 100-year anniversary of the building's seizure.

From the close of World War I until the Allied victories against the Axis dictatorships that ended World War II, Freemasonry in Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Franco's Spain was suppressed and declared to be a so-called "secret society." Countless European Masons were persecuted, arrested, and even executed for no other crime than being a Freemason. The Palazzo Giustiniani was seized from the Grand Orient Masons by the Mussolini regime for use by the Italian Senate, and Freemasonry in Italy was banned outright by 1926. After war broke out across Europe, Masonic halls all over Axis-occupied territories were confiscated, along with regalia, furniture, artwork, and especially grand lodge membership files. Masonic buildings were frequently turned into anti-Masonic propaganda displays and museums, luridly staged with the creepiest of props (skeletons were a big hit with the public) to perpetuate the unfounded allegations that the fraternity practiced Satanic worship, blasphemies, plotted revolutions, and other creepy, nefarious intrigues.

NOTE: To clarify: the Grand Orient of Italy is the largest obedience in that country, and it is the body that the overwhelming majority of U.S. grand lodges recognize. The Grand Lodge of Italy is the second largest group, a mixed body that admits both men and women, and is not deemed regular by the overwhelming majority of the Masonic world. But in a rarity, the United Grand Lodge of England—from whom many U.S. grand lodges seek clarity and guidance—recognizes the much smaller and newer Regular Grand Lodge of Italy. The U.S. did not uniformly follow UGLE's action, and continues not to do so.

After the war ended, and Freemasonry returned, the Grand Orient was permitted to move its headquarters back into the palazzo, but it continued to principally be occupied by the Senate offices. By 1981, the Masons again moved out – voluntarily this time – into a smaller building.

From my albeit imperfect understanding of the whole situation, it certainly sounds like the Grand Orient Masons are now the Senate's new absentee landlords.

From a letter circulated this week by the Grande Oriente d'Italia's Grand Master Stefano Bisi:

"Fascist paramilitary squads violently occupied the building on 5 November 1925, as the Court itself recalled. And immediately afterwards the fascist state acquired the building, through a settlement agreement, against which appeals were already presented in various judicial offices at the time, asserting its right of pre-emption on an asset of artistic value, without however first declaring the nullity of the contract stipulated by the GOI in 1911 for the purchase of the building itself.

"This was a condition, the Court said, prejudicial for the state to be able to exercise its right of pre- emption and acquire the property. Consequently, the regime illegally took possession of the property in violation of the 1909 law on artistic assets.

On these legal bases, the United Sections of the Supreme Court of Cassation sent the case back to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, remitting to it the assessment regarding the legitimacy of the acquisition procedure of Palazzo Giustiniani.

The Grand Orient expressed satisfaction with the court's decision and confirmed that the judicial initiative is aimed exclusively at restoring the truth of the facts to history in the full conviction that it represents the foundation of the essence of the democratic state to which the Grand Orient of Italy is proud to belong.

A victory for the Grand Master Stefano Bisi, his council and the staff of lawyers of the GOI. A very important step forward in the controversy which adds to other historic goals scored in these last years by the Italian Masonic institution.

Located close to Rome's Pantheon, the beginnings of this Roman palace were originally built as a religious residence in the mid-1500s on the Via della Dogana Vecchia. But in 1590, it was acquired by a Genoese prince named Giuseppe Giustiniani. Over time, Giustiniani's descendants bought up surrounding buildings, eventually connecting them together until it comprised the entire city block. 

Great big palazzos can look mighty empty unless they get filled up with statuary, paintings, murals and other tchotchkes, which is just what the Giustiniani's set about doing. The artwork collection was reputed to be comprised of more than 1,600 pieces, including paintings by some of the greatest artists of the Renaissance period, and even 1st century AD statuary excavated from the remains of Emperor Nero's infamous Baths. 

Many additions and modifications were done to the palace over the centuries. Most of the ancient statuary and the most valuable art pieces were sold off over the 1700 and 1800s, and by 1826, the last of the Giustiniani family died out. The building was then acquired by the Grazoli family, and for a while it was rented out as the diplomatic residence of the Tzarist Russian Ambassador to Italy.

The massive palazzo was finally leased to the Freemasons of the Grand Orient of Italy beginning in 1898 for 11,000 lire a year. Three years after that, the Grand Orient purchased the historic building outright for use as its headquarters, and converted several of the largest rooms into magnificent lodge meeting halls.

The ceiling of one gallery is decorated with images of King Solomon.

The same gallery today, stripped of its Masonic furnishings

Solomon looking over the plans for the Temple, in the background.

"Solomon's Judgement," the famous instance of two women claiming to be mothers of
the same newborn child. Solomon calls their bluff, and threatens to cut the child in half,
causing the liar to confess her fraudulent claim.

The opportunity to acquire the building outright was spearheaded in 1901 by the Grand Master (and Mayor of Rome at the time, by the way) Ernesto Nathan – the 7-story, 405-room palace was sold to the Grand Orient for 1,055,000 lire. Accounting for inflation since 1901 and the conversion rate between the Italian Lira and the U.S. Dollar, that original 1,055,000 lire purchase price calculates out to about US$11 billion today. 

That's with a B. Give or take. 

The Senate set aside space in the Palazzo for the Masons' return after WWII, but about 40 years later even that reduced area became too much room for the GOI to deal with. In 1981, the notorious P2 (Propaganda Due) scandal became an international crime headline-grabber. The complex plot involved a former Grand Orient Masonic lodge being operated without a charter by its expelled Worshipful Master, Licio Gelli, with a thousand secret members as a front for organized crime, government corruption, killings, terrorist attacks, bombings, and even the theft of a substantial sum of cash from the Vatican's own bank accounts. Even today, the P2 lodge is often described as having been a "shadow government," made up of evildoing Masons in high-ranking military and government positions. 

Even though the P2 lodge was operating illegally and the Grand Orient expelled and denounced all those involved, the European press rarely took care to explain the reality of the situation or make clear that thousands of rank and file Masons had nothing to do with Gelli's crimes. To this day, Freemasons all across Europe are frequently outed by the press and denounced as criminals primarily because the P2 scandal was so notorious. The reputation of the fraternity worldwide was sullied by the press coverage of the whole affair, even though the actual participants had nothing to do with Freemasonry.

In 1985 the Grand Orient moved its headquarters down the road into a much more modest (but still not-exactly scruffy) home –  the Villa Medici del Vascello in Rome (photo below), purchased at that time from Princess Elvina Pallavicini. 

Current home of the Grand Oriente d'Italia, in the former Villa Medici del Vascello.
Photo from the GOI website.

A departure agreement made in 1991 with the Senate was supposed to provide a large area at the Palazzo for an Italian Museum of Freemasonry – which never materialized. According to a 1985 article in La Repubblica, four floors of the Palazzo remained partially decorated with imagery of the Masonic fraternity.

NOTE: My own mastery of Italian is limited to "Ciao!" and "Pronto!", asking waiters for my dinner check to be handed over to the wealthier-looking guy at the next table, and shouting down the hall for an extra roll of carta igienica. Consequently, my deciphering details from Italian articles can't be trusted. But below is my probably-terrible English translation – aided by Google Translate:

"[T]he Sancta Sanctorum remains, that is, the main temple of the Grand Orient and five other smaller temples. It is here that at least once a week, at the behest of the grand master, Armando Corona, what the Freemasons call their "ritual work" takes place. Here is the "hall of [winding] steps", here are the Workshops, "sacred spaces above and outside the world", with the entrance located to the west, the blue-vaulted roof dotted with constellations with the signs of the zenith and of the nadir, and the black and white checkered floor to recall that of Solomon's Temple.

"The Grand Master's throne is surmounted by a canopy of blue fabric with gold fringes. On the eastern wall stand the initials of the phrase: "To the glory of the great architect of the universe". The statues of Hercules, Venus and Minerva next to the three flame lamps and the three love knots symbolize strength, beauty and wisdom. Wisdom, for the Grand Master Armando Corona, was to give victory to the Senate, which for years and years had been claiming the four floors of Palazzo Giustiniani occupied by the Grand Orient.

"However, I set one condition," says Corona. "Given that our name derives from the Giustiniani Palace, it is right and indispensable that in this palace the Grand Orient preserves at least one "ubi consistam" – some rooms – in order to symbolically justify its denomination". According to the compromise, three floors for a total of approximately three thousand square meters will be sold to the Senate and - in exchange for a symbolic rent with no deadlines - the first floor will instead be kept for the Grand Orient, where Corona intends to set up a permanent exhibition of the history of Freemasonry and in which the main temple will be maintained for its esoteric rites..."

It's true that governments generally have more money than either Elon Musk or God (in that order), but something tells me that the Italian Senate has no intention of offering to buy their longtime digs back from the Masons for US$11 billion.

From Il Tempo: "Giustiniani Palace. A glimmer of light for the Freemasonry museum/Il Tempo" reported by Riccardo Mazzoni:

After a century of battles, the Freemasons managed to reopen the case of Palazzo Giustiniani, the historic seat of the Grand Orient of Italy expropriated by the fascist regime. The Supreme Court of Cassation has in fact annulled the ruling of the Council of State which had established the jurisdiction of the ordinary judge on the issue, and the TAR will therefore have to judge. 

The Grand Orient of Italy had denounced the lack of the preliminary condition of the legitimate exercise of the power of the Italian State, i.e. the failure to declare the nullity of the deed of sale drawn up way back in 1911 in favor of Urbs (real estate company of the Grand Orient of Italy), with the consequence that, since the ownership deed in the company remained in force, the pre-emption decree issued by the government could not constitute a transfer deed in favor of the latter, an argument fully accepted by the Supreme Court.

The Grand Orient of Italy reiterated that the judicial initiative is aimed exclusively at restoring the truth of the facts to history, "in the full conviction that historical truth represents the foundation of the essence of the democratic state".

"The united sections of the Court of Cassation, Grand Master Stefano agreed with us" Bisi told Tempo. "We denounced and argued that the fascist regime could not legitimately exercise the right of pre-emption on the Palazzo Giustiniani because the purchase deed had not been declared null and void in our favor. Now I hope that the President of the Senate Ignazio La Russa will summon us in order to find an agreement to hand over at least those 140 square meters to make the museum of Italian Freemasonry, as foreseen by the agreement signed in 1991 by President Giovanni Spadolini and the Grand Orient of Italy."

The judicial process was restarted by the will of the current council at the end of July 2020: thanks to painstaking work done in the archives of the Grand Orient of Italy, fundamental documents were recovered thanks to which an appeal was presented to the TAR of Lazio on 29 July 2020 against the Senate "for the investigation and declaration of the abusive occupation of Palazzo Giustiniani, the historic seat of Freemasonry which was acquired by force of public property, with a sham transaction which forced the Grand Orient to recognize the legitimacy of the expropriation". But for this renunciation the fascist state promised compensation, and this was the basis that opened the way to the appeal. The one faced by the Freemasons of Palazzo Giustiniani was an authentic judicial ordeal, starting from the sentence of '53 of the Court of Appeal of Rome which declared the action for annulment due to the defect of consent causing violence to be extinguished "by statute of limitations", because the action "should have been carried out within five years of the events", i.e. in the period in which fascism exercised its maximum violence. A paradoxical motivation, therefore.

The Lazio Regional Administrative Court's ruling in December 2021, confirmed by the Council of State, then constituted yet another mockery, sending the dispute back to the jurisdiction of the ordinary judge. Now the Court of Cassation has brought justice, and the hope is that the final word will be put to an end to an affair which certainly does no credit to the republican state, which for decades has in fact legitimized an abuse of power perpetrated by the fascist regime with violence. Alongside judicial truth, therefore, there is also a political and institutional question of great importance: the repudiation of a false right acquired through a crime against humanity, which was in effect the persecution of the Freemasons culminating in the merciless hunt on the night of San Bartolomeo. "It cannot be tolerated," Bisi stated on several occasions, "that an undue claim by a State like Italy, which is the homeland of Democracy, Justice and Freedom, could be based on this crime." 

Six Arrested For Planning Terrorist Attacks on French Masonic Lodge and Past Grand Master

by Christopher Hodapp

The French press is reporting the Tuesday arrest of six members of what authorities are calling a "small neo-Nazi group" who were allegedly planning a violent attack on a Masonic lodge in Thionville. Thionville is located in Moselle, a department in Alsace-Lorraine in northeastern France. 

National anti-terrorism investigators have been observing the group since February. In a separate article reported yesterday, their plans also included an attack on the immediate Past Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France (2018-21), Jean-Philippe Hubsch, who is from Thionville.

From Franceinfo.fr and AFP:

Six members of a small neo-Nazi group, suspected of wanting to take violent action against a Masonic lodge, were arrested Tuesday, May 4 in the Doubs and Bas-Rhin, a judicial source confirmed on Friday to France Televisions. Three of them, two men and a woman aged 29 to 56, must be presented this Friday to a Parisian examining magistrate with a view to possible indictment for "criminal terrorist association", according to this source. The other three individuals were released.

According to BFMTV , this small group is called "Honor and Nation" and [their plans were] aimed at a Masonic lodge in Moselle. The national anti-terrorism prosecutor's office (Pnat) opened a preliminary investigation in February 2021 into the activities of this tiny ultra-right group. According to this judicial source, the [attack] was not imminent. These individuals were arrested following exchanges, and in particular because they were researching explosives. Searches have enabled the authorities to find weapons, but they could be legally detained, said the judicial source.

L'Est Republican reports:

The [current] Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France Pierre-Marie Adam said he learned "with amazement" of this planned attack on a Masonic lodge in Moselle. In a statement, he congratulated "all the police services concerned, placed under the authority of the prefect Laurent Nuñez, national coordinator of intelligence and the fight against terrorism, for their speed and efficiency".

France Bleu posted a very brief statement from Past Grand Master Hubsch:

Jean-Philippe Hubsch has not received any threats lately, but says he is worried despite everything : "I was amazed when I learned this today, even more when I was told that I would have been the potential target. It's a semi-surprise because as a former Grand Master of the Grand Orient de France, I have been exposed throughout my tenure. But in the world we live in, with a resurgence of political or religious extremists, I am unfortunately not surprised "

According to the various reports, the anti-terrorism prosecutor's office has had the group under investigation since February. The suspects were conducting online research into explosives and weapons. Reportedly, they had been in contact with Rémy Daillet-Weidemann, who is notorious as a major French conspiracy peddler and currently lives in Malaysia, dodging an international arrest warrant. The former president of the MoDem political party in Haute-Garonne was recently ousted from his own party. Daillet-Weidemann frequently accuses Freemasonry of being a "pedo-satanic obedience." In October 2020, he gave a speech in which he said, "I will ban Masonry and all other dangerous sects that pass over the heads of citizens," and he regularly calls for the overthrow of France's government.

French 'Yellow Vests' Attack Rennes Masonic Temple

On Saturday, June 1, a group of French 'Gilets Jaunes' (Yellow Vest) demonstrators attacked a Masonic Temple in Rennes, France. According to the Ouest-France.fr website, about a hundred Yellow Vest supporters in Rennes were ending their weekly demonstration when about a dozen of them broke off and headed for the Masonic Temple on Rue Theirs. A lodge meeting was going on inside at the time.

According to Jean-Pierre Planckaert, a member of the Grand Orient de France, the group had obviously been drinking. "They started to kick the entry door. They were almost all drunken. They broke the door, then threw bottles of beer on the ground floor. The guardian of the Temple (Tyler) was very scared." 

Planckaert is worried. "The Freemasons are often the target of some Yellow Vests, particularly on social networks. They regularly denounce the great 'Judeo-Masonic conspiracy' who control the world... We'd already had the [grafitti] tags on our Temple in Rennes, but never this type of attack. We condemn it with the utmost firmness. The guardian is still very [shaken]." 

The female Tyler was able to prevent the vandals from barging into the meeting going on in the lodge room next door. Fortunately, the Temple itself sits beside a police station, and they intervened immediately.

The Masonic Temple of Rennes, which dates from 1932, hosts between 24 and 25 meetings each month of several lodges in the city. An official complaint was filed with the authorities by the Lodge of Perfect Union, which is affiliated with the Grande Orient de France, owner of the building. The Grand Orient de France is the largest Masonic obedience in that country, but is not recognized as regular by the majority of Freemasons throughout the world. They permit women to join their lodges, as do several other French jurisdictions, and by some estimates, nearly one quarter of the Masons in France are women.

In March, a group of Yellow Vest protesters attacked a Masonic Temple in the southwest town of Tarbes, near the Spanish border.

This past weekend marks the 29th straight weekend of Yellow Vest protests in France. Since the very first high-visibility demonstrations on Paris' Champs Elysées in November of last year, increasing reports of vandalism against Jews, Jewish business, and generic 'anti-Zionism' sloganeering have appeared in the press. Anti-Masonic sentiments have been less reported, and seem to be less frequent. Masons don't appear to a widespread target. The overall movement itself is remarkably impartial and politically and socially ecumenical. But because the Yellow Vests are seen widely as a backlash against growing globalism and a more distant government out of touch with the public, they have attracted a small gaggle of believers in conspiracy theories with the same old usual suspects: Jews, world bankers, New World Order elites closeted in their secret societies like the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, and of course, the Freemasons.

Grand Orient of US Loses French Endorsement

My email inbox has been inundated today with messages saying that the Grand Orient de France has voted this weekend to withdraw its treaty of amity with the Grand Orient of the United States. I have no real independent verification of this today, but if true, it's not a good development for the GOUSA, as the GOdF was about the only Masonic jurisdiction of any size or reputation that recognized them.

The Grand Orient of the USA was formed in 2005, and received a patent from the GOdF in 2008. In spite of wildly shifting claims over the last five and a half years, it is unclear how many lodges are really at work under the GOUSA, and how many members it has, outside of Halcyon Lodge in Cleveland, Ohio. Needless to say, it is considered stunningly irregular by mainstream Masonry.

The Grand Orient de France is the largest Masonic obedience in that country with approximately 50,000 members, and is not recognized as regular by the vast majority of mainstream Masonic grand lodges around the world, primarily for its policy of not requiring members to have a belief in a Supreme Being, and more recently for allowing lodges to accept women as members.

If you are not a Mason, and are looking to join the Freemasonry that is recognized the world over as regular and the legitimate heir to the traditions of the lodges that formed the first Grand Lodge in London in 1717, click here to find the regular, recognized grand lodge for your state or region, as well as links to the historically African-American grand lodges of Prince Hall Freemasonry. Be aware that membership in groups like the GOUSA does not allow you to travel and visit more than a tiny handful of their own new lodges, and that the overwhelming majority of the world's Masons will not regard you as a legitimately recognized member. Only you can answer for yourself how important that is to you.

Women Not Flocking To Grand Orient of France

In 2010, France's largest Masonic obedience, the Grand Orient de France, with about 50,000 members, voted to admit women into its lodges. The decision was left to the individual lodge, and required no special permission.

Well, women aren't exactly flocking to the doors of the GOF's lodges. According to Au GODF : mais où sont les femmes ? by François Koch:

• 53 women are now members of GOF (including twenty affiliations transferred mostly from the Grande Loge Feminine de France)

• 160 requests for initiation of women or affiliations by existing sisters are being processed.

• Only one in five GOF lodges have refused to accommodate women.

The Grand Orient of France does not require its members to profess a belief in a Supreme Being, does not require lodges to have a Volume of Sacred Law on their altars, and does not prohibit taking official positions on religious and political issues. It is regarded as irregular by the majority of the Masonic world.

There are at least ten Masonic allegiances of varying importance in France. The GOF has just under 50,000 members. The Grande Loge Nationale Française (male only) has about 38,000 members, and is the obedience that is most uniformly recognized as regular by the majority of grand lodges around the world. The male only Grande Loge de France (GLdF) has 28,000.

Women make up approximately 17% of the Freemasons in France at various other grand lodges. Le Droit Humain (DH) is a Co-Masonic obedience which claims 15,000 members, and the Grande Loge Feminine de France (GLFF), represents some 14,000 women.

It should be noted by all of us in the US that every one of the grand lodges in France have steadily increased their membership over the last six years.

Messages From the Grand Lodge of the Czech Republic

Two interesting communications of note have come from Brother Jacques Huyghebaert at the Grand Lodge of the Czech Republic in the last two weeks.

The first has to do with a report last month that the Grand Orients of France and Belgium were opening a bureau in Brussels to influence European Union policies on religion:

To All Grand Lodges in amity
Prague, 23rd February 2010
Subject : European Masonic Bureau in Brussels

Dear Sir and Very Worshipful Brother,
Following recent reports in the European Press, published in the Czech Republic, according to which "the Masons" are hoping to open a bureau in Brussels to "to lobby against the rising influence of religious organisations in the EU institutions," our Most Worshipful Grand Master, Brother Hynek Beran, accepted last week an invitation for an interview by Czech Television during which he was able to clarify the position of our Grand Lodge on this matter.

The 10 minute interview which was broadcast live on Friday 19th February 2010 is available at http://www.ceskatelevize.cz/ivysilani/210411058060219-pred-polednem-zpravodajsky-blok/ Attached herewith is a copy of the English version of the Press Release which our Grand Lodge has issued in order to dissociate ourselves entirely in the eyes of the Czech public from a politically motivated initiative, which in our view has no place in Freemasonry.

Freemasonry was revived after the collapse of the communist regime in 1989, and is currently enjoying an excellent reputation in the Czech Republic, it being generally considered as a highly respectable organisation based on impeccable moral integrity. It is useful to know in this context that pre World War II Czechoslovakia was the only country in Europe whose President was a Freemason and that during both the Nazi occupation and the Soviet era the Masonic Order was suppressed and Freemasons persecuted.

This TV interview therefore was very important for us to preserve the good image of Freemasonry and to dissociate our Grand Lodge in the public opinion from Grand Orient Freemasonry. Public reaction to the interview, shows approval by the Czech viewers of our Grand Lodge’s attitude to refuse as a matter of principle to get involved in any political and religious issues.

Fraternal greetings
Jacques HUYGHEBAERT
Grand Secretary for External Relations
mailto:grandlodge@freemasonry.cz

The second message comes in the wake of the pronouncement by the Grand Master of Arkansas prohibiting mainstream Freemasons from purchasing state-issued Freemason license plates because they benefit a Prince Hall charity. The GL of Arkansas does not recognize its Prince Hall counterpart:

Brethren,

This may be an insignificant gesture, from a small and distant Grand Lodge
in central Europe, but considering the unfortunate racial discrimination
which still seems to prevail at the Grand Lodge of Arkansas, the Grand
Lodge of The Czech Republic is not willing to establish fraternal relations
with it, but will gladly do so with the MWPHGL of Arkansas.

The GL of the Czech Republic is currently in amity with about 200 Grand
Lodges worldwide including those Prince Hall Grand Lodges which have
responded positively to our invitations to establish fraternal relations

S&F

Jacques Huyghebaert, MPS life
& GS for External Relations
Grand Lodge of the Czech Republic
grandlodge@freemasonry.cz