By catholicherald.co.uk

The deputy mayor of Nice has said that nuns wearing habits are no more welcome on his beaches than women wearing burkinis. Speaking to presenter Edward Stourton on the World at One on BBC
Radio 4 yesterday, the Deputy Mayor, Rudy Salles defended the burkini
ban and said: “What is the burkini? There is bikini and there is burka
and the burka is forbidden. When you go to the beach you wear a bathing
suit. You don’t go to the beach as you want. If I want to go on the
beach naked it’s forbidden-I cannot.

“So if you want to go to the beach in a burkini it’s forbidden
because it is a provocation. Religion and the state are completely
separated. Religion is the affair of each one but each one at home, each
one at church, not each one in the street.”

When Edward Stourton asked him: “What about a Catholic nun. Would she be allowed to appear on the beach wearing her habit?” The deputy mayor replied: “No. The same.”

Yesterday, the council of state, France’s highest administrative
court, examined an appeal by the French Human Rights League to scrap the
burkini bans.

The row has escalated since pictures emerged this week of a woman
wearing a burkini on a Nice beach being approached and surrounded by the
police.

Nice’s deputy mayor said the removal of burkinis was a “necessity” after the terrorist attack last month.