In a temperature of a little less than 10 ° C, they gather around an arbor, where an altar was summarily erected on a side table. About a hundred people, including 25 migrants, associations and Calais residents who came to support them, attended a Christmas mass on Friday, December 24, announced by the Bishop of Arras, in a parking lot near a camp area in Calais. “The situation is so precarious for these people that I prefer to be with them”, Olivier Leborgne told AFP.

This “bad weather”, it is “middle poor”, “these are the real conditions in which these people live”, commented the priest Philippe Demeestere, at the origin of this ceremony. He was the one who went on a hunger strike pendant 25 days in October and November, to denounce the treatments “inhuman” released to migrants on the North and Pas-de-Calais coast, the starting point for crossings to England.

Friday evening, the migrants present were mainly Eritreans of Orthodox Christian faith, used to camping near this vacant lot east of Calais, where associations distribute meals daily.