Friends, Citizens, Companions, Comrades,
Today, 20th September, we celebrate International Free Thought Day.
This day did not come about by chance. It was at the Second Congress of the International Association of Free Thought (IAFT) in Mar del Plata, Argentina, that it was decided to make 20 September International Free Thought Day on all continents, in reference to 20 September 1870, the day Garibaldi’s troops entered Rome, putting an end to the ‘Papal States’ and signifying ‘the definitive fall of the Pope’s temporal power’.
The date of 20 September is dear to our hearts. This day was established to affirm freedom of conscience, universal secularism, and the right of every human being to think for themselves, against all dogma, throughout the world.
20 September is the date to express a rebellious word, a refusal but also a promise. Because we are told that religion is love, that it is peace, compassion, morality, a guide for souls and a bond between people. We are told that it elevates, consoles and unites.
But that is a lie! For beneath the guise of virtue, religion is a yoke. A hierarchical, authoritarian power. A machine for submission to texts such as the Bible, the Koran, or any other sacred books and revealed truths.
It is not love that it organises, but fear. It is not morality that it embodies, but more often guilt, prohibition, silence, punishment.
It does not teach emancipation or critical thinking, but prostration and submission.
It does not bring people together, but divides them through dogma, ritual, religious law, castes, impurities, and infidels.
Religions claim to be the path to God. In reality, they are the obstacle standing between man and his own freedom. They were – and remain – the allies of tyrannies, empires, wars, the violation of consciences, and often of bodies. They chain, they mutilate, they conceal and deny. While free thinkers celebrate reason and science, religions sanctify ignorance and belief.
Free Thought has no prophets, only thinkers.
How many crimes have been committed by clergymen wearing cassocks, Talmudic robes, turbans, djellabas or monastic robes, who always pose as prudish puritans!
How many lives have been ruined, how much silence imposed, how many truths stifled by the complicity of governments and the cowardice of elites!
➡ In France, 330,000 children were victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy, according to the CIASE report.
➡ Dozens of Catholic boarding schools were the scene of systemic abuse, such as at Notre-Dame de Bétharram, where rapes were covered up at the highest levels of government..
➡ In the United States, thousands of children abused in ultra-Orthodox yeshivot are silenced by clan law.
➡ In several Muslim countries, children are beaten or raped in Koranic schools, madrasas, under the pretext of religious education..
➡ In India, Hindu ashrams where revered gurus have been exposed as rapists and predators.
➡ And in Buddhism, influential monks accused of sexual assault in Tibetan communities without ever being punished.
And impunity remains the norm everywhere, in all faiths, protected by the silence of the authorities, fear of scandal, or worse: state complicity.
➡ In the Catholic Church, Cardinal Barbarin, who was found guilty, never served any sentence. The Vatican refuses to open its archives. In Ireland, the Tuam mass graves remain unresolved.
➡ In ultra-Orthodox Jewish circles, cases are buried in Israel as well as in the United States, protected by the community argument.
➡ In Islam, abuse in madrasas is ignored, and in Egypt, it is classified ‘in the name of honour’.
➡ In Hinduism, gurus such as Asaram Bapu have enjoyed political protection for years.
➡ In Buddhism, spiritual authorities themselves cover up abuse, under the guise of detachment and silence.
And everywhere, the same pattern: silence, immunity, the invisibilisation of victims. This is what we call the global spiritual Omerta.
Today, 20 September, International Free Thought Day, we demand justice for the victims, not prayers for them.
Neither canon law, nor Sharia, nor Halakha, nor Dharmaśāstra, we want only one law: human law.
That is why we demand the opening of the archives, the abolition of the Concordats, and an end to public funding of religions.
The 9th Congress of the International Association of Free Thought, to be held in Grenoble/Lyon, France, on 10 and 11 October 2025, will have the following items on its agenda:
● The fight for justice for all victims of the Churches will conclude in Lyon with a public conference organised by Libre Pensée with associations representing victims of the Catholic clergy.
● The implementation of international secular solidarity by Free Thought towards all oppressed and persecuted people, victims of religions.
● The international struggle for the separation of church and state on every continent and in every country.
We encourage you to come in large numbers and register at:
This troubled world smells of gunpowder.
War is raging everywhere. In Palestine, it is genocide in real time, orchestrated with the blessing of powers that claim to be civilised. Blood is flowing, children are dying, hospitals are burning, and we are told about civilisation? But the Nuremberg of Zionism is underway, and the universal conscience will not forget.
And while people suffer, while people are killed in the name of profit or colonisation, while everything has become a commodity, public education services are under attack and private schools subject to dogma continue to be funded by public money.
How many governments and states collude and give free rein to recognised and unrecognised religions when they should be working for peace by defending secularism and remaining neutral?
La Libre Pensée calls for resistance and action!
We, the heirs of Protagoras, Rousseau, Jaurès, and Diderot, say: ‘Man is the measure of all things.’
● Like Rousseau, we say that ‘man is born free’ but denounce that ‘everywhere he is in chains’ — and we want to break these chains forged by dogmas and domination.
● With Diderot, we coldly remind ourselves: ‘Faith consists in believing what reason does not believe.’ And that is why we prefer lucidity to blindness, science to belief, human justice to supernatural submission.
● And we echo Jean Jaurès’ cry: ‘Courage is seeking the truth and speaking it’, even when it disturbs thrones, altars or states.
We reaffirm that no free society can exist without freedom of conscience. No democracy worthy of the name should tolerate the privileges of religious groups. No truly secular state should allow clergy to dictate their laws in schools, hospitals or courts.
We are the heirs to a centuries-old struggle against oppression and for freedom.
● On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the French law separating church and state, we declare:
● We demand the complete separation of church and state!
● We affirm loud and clear: our intelligence is enough. Our conscience guides us. Our humanity is our only guide. We want to live as free beings in a free society.
On 6 December 2025 at 2 p.m., at the Japy Gymnasium in Paris’s 11th arrondissement, a major national and international secular meeting will be held to celebrate the 120th anniversary of the law of 9 December 1905, drafted at the World Congress of Free Thought in Rome in 1904, and above all to defend it, as it is under threat from all sides.
We call on you to participate in large numbers in this truly secular initiative alongside Libre Pensée and the historic secular associations that brought about the 1905 law and defend it every day.Nous vous appelons à participer nombreux à cette véritable action laïque avec la Libre Pensée et les Associations laïques historiques qui ont fait la loi de 1905 et qui la défendent chaque jour.
Today, 20 September 2025, celebrating International Free Thought Day is an act of resistance:
Résistance against obscurantism.
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Resistance against barbarism.
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An uprising for peace, justice, reason and freedom.
So we say:
Long live free thought! Long live secularism!
Long live universal freedom of conscience!
(Speech prepared by José Arias, member of the International Council of the IAFT)
