Laicist

Most of the European press (and, indeed, most European elites) talk as if Europe must be "laicist," which is the word they use for "aggressively secular," in the manner of the French Revolution. […] It was asked of Buttiglione, and in such an aggressive and unexpected way that many in Italy are saying publicly that this was a deliberate set-up, engineered by laicists in Brussels still determined to "ecraser l'infame" — to erase every vestige of Christian faith — from their new laicist Europe.

Today, we face the wave of secularism which has as its starting point the strict separation of Church and State: a laicist model advocating that the State should be strictly separate from religion which is conceived as belonging exclusively to the private domain.

Thirty years later, with the connivance of the Parti Quebecois, the laicists proceeded to attack Catholic schools by means of the Proulx Report of 1999.

It was asked of Buttiglione, and in such an aggressive and unexpected way that many in Italy are saying publicly that this was a deliberate set-up, engineered by laicists in Brussels still determined to "ecraser l'infame" — to erase every vestige of Christian faith — from their new laicist Europe.