April 14, 2023, Agde Cathedral (Hérault), at mass time. Standing in the apse in place of the priest, Mayor Gilles d'Ettore is jubilant. A statue of the Archangel Saint-Michel, protector of the city since the Middle Ages, has just been reinstalled, almost 80 years after the previous one was melted down by the German occupiers. That day, we rush to see this silvery and kitsch representation of the saint armed with a sword: 250 kg of steel which magnetizes a first row of non-Catholic faithful. There we find the protagonists of a sprawling affair, which is the subject of an investigation carried out by the Montpellier financial brigade.
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