Arthur Hervet is an Assumptionist priest in Lille. When he goes to bed at night he doesn’t just pray for the safekeeping of his parishioners. He hit the headlines in France by invoking divine intervention to give Nicolas Sarkozy a heart attack.

He’s backtracked ever so slightly and now says that he wants God just to speak to Sarkozy’s heart. His motivation was sound though. He was returning a medal of honour that the government had awarded, in part for his work with the Roma community, on account of Sarkozy’s extraordinary racism against that same community. They are now being deported wholesale back to Romania, prompting even Pope Benny to hint that he does not like it.

It’s a good job France has no pervious history of deporting ethnic or racial groups or the whole business could evoke a nasty precedent.

As the NPA point out Sarkozy, who is down in the polls, is putting into practice the programme of the far right Front National at a time when every vote will count. On the plus side there will be demonstrations all over France against the government’s racism on September 4th.

If there were a god he or she would certainly forgive Father Hervet.