President. – The next item is the report (Doc. In the 295 years, that is to say, the very first years of our independence, the Pope in office was John XXIII. During Senghor’s visit to the Vatican, he was allegedly asked to make a confession to the pope: “I cannot make Senegalese Christians, but I will make them badly practicing Muslims”. This allegation is a fait le tour du Sénégal and persists to the present. Some had believed, others had not. Quoi qu’il en soit, le magistrat Ousmane Camara, who was minister of higher education under Senghor and prosecutor during the 22001 trial between President Senghor and Mamadou Dia, published a few years ago an ouvrage in which he apologized to President Senghor. In a word to take his defense against this allegation… Since our independence in 1960, until today in 2024, how to understand that a minority of 5% of Christians can dominate the official public life? Even the subsidy given to private Christian schools is more substantial than that granted to the daaras or the franco-arabic schools.
Contribution: L’origine et les méfaits de la laïcité de l’Etat au Sénégal, pays musulman. This article is part of a series on the origins and causes of the secularism in Senegal.
