Operators work on Lilith, the “guardian of darkness,” built for the Hellfest metal festival in Toulouse, southwestern France, on Oct. 15, 2024. “Lilith” is one of the characters in the urban opera of the French company La Machine titled “The Guardian of the Temple Opus II: The Portal of Darkness,” which will be presented on Oct. 25–27, 2024, in Toulouse. / Credit: LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP via Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 21, 2024 / 15:00 pm (CNA).

The archbishop of Toulouse has consecrated the southwest French city to the Sacred Heart of Jesus ahead of a controversial street performance featuring “satanic” imagery that is set to take place next weekend. 

“If we want to conquer with Christ,” Archbishop Guy de Kerimel reflected during his homily for the Oct. 16 consecration Mass, “if we want the heart of Jesus to reign over the city and the [arch]diocese of Toulouse, we must fight the roots of evil and sin in our own heart, seek, with the grace of God, humility, flee indifference, renounce violence, work for justice, be artisans of peace, seek purity of heart, be servants of mercy, accept to suffer contradiction.”

The archbishop’s decision to consecrate the city and archdiocese comes ahead of the operatic city-funded production “La porte des Ténèbres,” translated as “The Gate of Darkness,” which is the second installment of a similar performance that took place in 2018. 

The Sacred Heart of Jesus, he emphasized to those gathered for the consecration, “is the most eloquent revelation of the victory of the divine love manifested by Jesus, son of God and son of man, dead for our sins and risen from the dead for our salvation.”

Because of Christ’s passion, the archbishop said, “love is not dead,” and Christians can have “hearts open to testify to hope” amid darkness. 

“The consecration of the city and the [arch]diocese to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is therefore for us an invitation to conversion to show, in our wounded world, something of the new world, born of the pierced heart of Jesus,” he stated. “How are Christian communities, with all people of goodwill, witnesses and actors of the victory of love in the world today?” 

Produced by François Delarozière, a French artist and director of the street theater company La Machine, this year’s performance sparked controversy when it was revealed that the immersive citywide opera would include “satanic” imagery. A towering mechanical depiction of Lilith, a demonic figure in Judaism, will be on display, along with Satan’s cross, Lucifer’s sigil, and the sign of the beast — which are set to represent the “three prodigious signs” that Lilith will gather during the performance to open the gates of hell. 

For the past several months, advertisements for the performance — on social media and plastered to the windows of trams throughout the city — have featured the statue of Lilith along with images of burning churches, a demonic red figure with a calf’s head, and numerous walking skeletons. 

The towering mechanical likeness of the demonic half-woman was originally constructed for an international metal music festival called “Hellfest” in Brittany this past summer. 

Delarozière in an interview with AFP news denied assertions that the performance contains satanic elements, stating that the story is really “about love, death, life, and the afterlife, with the great myths that have spanned the centuries.” 

“We all have the right to say what we want and what we think,” he added, “but we don’t have the right to censor or forbid.”