The major health crises that humanity has experienced have often led to a debate on the justified search for explanations and the search for responsibility and culpability. Thus, each epidemic throughout history has had its wave of stigmatization, and the COVID-19 pandemic is no exception to this logic.
In fact, when a major health crisis occurs, witch hunts or scapegoating becomes a way of exorcising collective fear through scenes of stigmatisation that often ends up disintegrating a social fabric already weakened by political, economic and social crises.
We publish here, in the original French version, a contribution from the Dicastery on this particularly widespread social phenomenon.