The decree of February 6th 1911 applies the law of December 9th 1905 to separate the Church and the State in the French colonies of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Reunion. This complete separation gives to the religious institution its freedom since it is not under the financial and juridic dependence of public authority anymore. Even if the issues of retirement and inventory of goods take place quite quickly and without any major incident, except in Saint-Gilles-les-Hauts, the retribution of personal properties and real estates belonging to the ecclesiastical establishments will only be solved during the Vichy Administration and in the beginning of the 4th Republic.After the time of passion linked to the application of the law will come the time of cordial Agreement right after the World War 1 during the episcopate of his Lordship de Beaumont. The Church, which was supposed to be the Absente would then be present in the colonial on to the postcolonial society, on a mutual respect basis. During this period, the Church made a bold act (the fight against fraud for the elections of April 1936), a support going to the dishonest compromise with the Vichy Administration, and the struggle against Communism, especially after World War 2. The sixties and the seventies would be the time of Assertion (the fight against electoral fraud, the struggle for natural birth regulation, criticism of the economic and social project and model but also alternative propositions) and also a time of Emancipation not without any domestic tearing, often linked to Society, and finally a time for the check of all sorts of manipulations, whether old ones (the right wing) or new ones (the Communist Party of Reunion).In the 70s, his Lordship Gilbert Aubry, the actual bishop, finishes off the process of emancipation of the Church that had started ten years before. From 1911 to 1981 the Catholic Church in Reunion Island would go from the Separation with the State to Emancipation.
