The initiative is quite unusual: the former singer of a boy band that was popular in the 1990s converted to Catholicism and has just made a documentary glorifying the Sacred Heart. The film, which has just been released in French cinemas, has been met with national censorship, with advertising agencies and local authorities refusing to screen it on the grounds of alleged \u201cviolations of secularism.\u201d Despite\u2014or because of\u2014this, it has been a hit with audiences.<\/p>\n
The career of Steven Gunnell, the son of a British rocker living in France, has had many twists and turns. In the 1990s, he shared the stage with three other young men in the rock band Alliage, well known to teenage girls, which enjoyed some significant success on the French pop scene.<\/p>\n
After the band split up in the early 2000s, Steven Gunnell went through a difficult period and sank into alcoholism. His conversion to Catholicism helped him recover, and he decided to put his artistic career at the service of his faith. After writing and performing Catholic-inspired music, he turned his attention to making a documentary film entitled Sacr\u00e9-C\u0153ur: son r\u00e8gne n\u2019aura pas de fin (Sacred Heart: His Reign Will Have No End), in which he explores devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.<\/p>\n
This particular devotion has a very French history.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Three hundred and fifty years ago, in 1675, a Visitation nun from Burgundy, Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, was struck by visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, asking her to work for the spread of his devotion. In 1689, he asked Marguerite-Marie to go to King Louis XIV and ask him to consecrate France to his Sacred Heart and to add its image to the kingdom\u2019s banners. The request went unheeded, but a little over a century later, the Sacred Heart was adopted as an emblem by counter-revolutionaries committed to defending their king and their faith during the Reign of Terror in 1793. Another request of this kind was made to President Raymond Poincar\u00e9 during the First World War by another nun, Claire Ferchaud\u2014again to no avail. The basilica dedicated to the Sacred Heart has dominated Paris for 150 years and is one of the most visited places in the capital.<\/p>\n
Gunnell\u2019s film, made with his wife Sabrina, tells the story of this devotion to the Sacred Heart, from the apparitions of Saint Marguerite-Marie to the present day, alternating between historical narrative, spiritual reflections on the love of Christ, and testimonies from people converted by his Sacred Heart.<\/p>\n
Upon its release, the documentary was met with a powerful wave of hostility. Mediatransports, the advertising agency for the RATP (Paris transport authority) and the SNCF (national railway company), refused to run any promotional posters for the film<\/a>, judging it too \u201cconfessional and proselytising\u201d and therefore \u201cincompatible with the principle of public service neutrality.\u201d This is not the first time that Mediatransports has censored subjects related to Christian identity. In 2015, the agency refused a poster campaign<\/a> for a concert on the grounds that it was organised \u201cfor the benefit of Eastern Christians,\u201d for the same reasons. The neutrality of public service is a convenient excuse, since every year the corridors of the Paris metro are plastered with campaigns for Islamic charities or food advertisements targeting Muslims during Ramadan.<\/p>\n Hubert de Torcy, director of the SAJE Distribution group, which manages the film\u2019s distribution, believes Mediatransports\u2019 decision is unfair: \u201cThe subject of the film is part of French history and French culture,\u201d he explained to Le Figaro. Speaking on Europe 1, director Steven Gunnell pointed out the absurdity of tolerating posters for ostensibly anti-Christian films such as The Nun, The Exorcist, and The Conjuring in public spaces, but rejecting Sacr\u00e9-C\u0153ur.<\/p>\n Steven James Gunnell t\u00e9moigne apr\u00e8s l’interdiction de son film \u00abSacr\u00e9 Coeur\u00bb : \u00abJ’ai p\u00e9t\u00e9 un c\u00e2ble hier soir, je ne supporte plus qu’on censure le christianisme en France\u00bb, dans #MorandiniLive<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/BT7aIpggTX<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 CNEWS (@CNEWS) October 23, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n Sacr\u00e9-C\u0153ur has many detractors. The progressive newspaper La Croix<\/a>, although officially Catholic and distributed in many parishes and religious communities, even published an op-ed condemning the film, which is accused of \u201creinforcing the links between Catholicism and the far right.\u201d The accusation is aimed at conservative Catholic billionaire Vincent Bollor\u00e9, owner of the CNews channel, who helped finance the film. \u201cThis is not about criticising a film, but about showing what its supporters say about it,\u201d reads the collective op-ed published by La Croix, which is fond of this type of stigmatisation.<\/p>\n The film was released on October 1st in 150 theatres across France\u2014just over one per department\u2014but without any national advertising coverage.<\/p>\n The offensive also spread to the very places where it was being shown, with some municipalities simply refusing to allow the film to be screened in their cinemas.<\/p>\n One case in particular made headlines\u2014that of Marseille. The film was to be screened at the Ch\u00e2teau de la Buzine\u2014an iconic location, as it is the castle immortalised by Proven\u00e7al writer and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol in his work Le Ch\u00e2teau de ma m\u00e8re (My Mother\u2019s Castle), which has since become a cultural centre\u2014but was pulled from the programme by Socialist mayor Beno\u00eet Payan just one hour before it was due to be shown, on the grounds that it was \u201can attack on secularism,\u201d following a report by a city official. \u201cThe decision not to hold this screening in a municipal facility is in strict accordance with the law. A public facility cannot host screenings that, by their nature and content, are of a religious nature,\u201d the municipality explained in a press release.<\/p>\n Several centre and right-wing elected officials protested the decision<\/a>. \u201dAfter blacklisting Jews, now it\u2019s Catholics!\u201d said the president of the region, Renaud Muselier, indignantly. Franck Allisio, the National Rally candidate for the upcoming municipal elections in Marseille, denounced the \u201cChristianophobia\u201d at work in Marseille.<\/p>\n Together with the director, conservative senator St\u00e9phane Ravier, a close associate of Marion Mar\u00e9chal, filed an urgent administrative appeal<\/a> to lift the screening ban, denouncing \u201cthe false pretence of selective secularism.\u201d The court ruled in their favour, finding that the mayor\u2019s decision \u201cconstituted a serious and manifestly illegal violation of freedom of expression, freedom of artistic creation, and freedom of artistic distribution.\u201d The distribution of a film of a Christian nature does not in any way constitute a violation of secularism.<\/p>\n Making amends, the socialist mayor finally picked up the phone to call the director, even promising to attend a screening of the film. As always in such cases, censorship only served to strengthen the motivation of viewers. The film is entering its fifth week in theatres and is about to pass the 300,000 viewer mark.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t