Bruneau Laurette Ordained as Minister in right-wing Evangelical Church outfit

22.12.2023

While scrolling on their respective social media programs, two different LALIT members came across a Facebook post where Bruneau Laurette announced that he had been ordained as a preacher in some church neither had heard of. When we checked out the post, we got “Sorry, this content isn’t available right now”. We decided not to worry, the Press will cover this.

But, no.

So far, we have seen no mention of this in Week End, L’Express, Le Mauricien, 5-Plus, Le Defi. All we have gleaned is from Mauritius Times on Friday 15 December. It had picked up on the news – it does not give its source, but we assume it is the same post – and published an article, “Bruneau Laurette devient pasteur evangeliste”. The point of view of the newspaper may be particular – alerting people to the “dangers” of conversion – but has the merit of putting on record that the news exists – and of offering a political analysis of what this might, in their view, mean. This is to the credit of Mauritius Times.

Bruneau Laurette was, after all, Mr. Importance Himself, for all the opposition political parties in Mauritius. They all even allied with him – Labour, MMM, PMSD, Rama Valayden who was a joint leader with him of a party, Ashok Subron and his Rezistans who were his “mam kole” for a years, and more recently the maverick, Sherry Singh, who may still be co-leader of One Moris with Laurette, who knows? 

LALIT was the only opposition party to criticize him and his populist politics. We kept a distance from him.  The Press thought he was the cat’s whiskers. They were almost joint organizers of his big, populist rallies. His big march began at the Catholic Cathedral and ended at the US Embassy, which gave Laurette a hand. Many Catholic Church parishes mobilized behind him, texting people, without even knowing who he was, organizing transport to attend. Eventually, in its favour, the Hierarchy put out the word, if somewhat late, that they did not vouch for him (“Nu pa konn li.”)

Now, when he converts to what Mauritius Times identifies as “Joshua Generation Ministries” all we get from the rest of the Press is “silans radyo”. As if this is not worth analyzing at all. None of the other political parties, to our knowledge, have commented publicly on his conversion and ordination. 

So, we looked up the Generation Joshua Ministries – the US founding was in 2003, and it is seen as a right-wing “political” movement. It openly supports and rallies behind right-wing Republican candidates. There is a vast network of extreme right-wing Evangelical churches in the USA. This one is against abortion, LGBT rights and in favour of “home-schooling”. The founders are called Mike Smith and Michael Farris. Mauritius Times links Laurette to the Indian version of the outfit – which may or may not be something different.