Quebec City officials have voted to remove a crucifix displayed in the city’s council chamber. The decision follows a recommendation to preserve the item in a heritage collection while reinforcing the principle of state “secularism.”

The crucifix will be relocated to Quebec City’s collection of ethno-historical artifacts, according to the CBC. The decision aligns with a provincial trend toward removing religious symbols from government spaces.

The council’s resolution comes after months of deliberation by an advisory commission on “inclusion,” which had concluded the crucifix was incompatible with a space meant to embody democratic and religious neutrality.

The commission, made up of elected officials, community members and the Wendat Nation chief, reportedly consulted legal and historical experts to support its conclusions.

The crucifix was first placed in the council chamber in 1936, removed in the 1970s, and reinstalled around a decade later. The crucifix hanging in the chamber was sculpted by artist Jacques Bourgault.

In September, Mayor Bruno Marchand publicly supported the commission’s conclusion that the council chamber must reflect state neutrality.

His position marks a departure from that of former Mayor Régis Labeaume, who had retained the crucifix in 2019, calling it a historical object that should not be removed in the name of secularism. Bill 21, formally titled “An Act respecting the reinforcement of laicity in Quebec” and passed in 2019, is a provincial law reinforcing secularism in public institutions.

That same year, the crucifix that had hung for decades in Quebec’s National Assembly was taken down from above the Speaker’s chair in the Blue Room, marking one of the earliest such removals in the province’s recent political history.

Last week, the Coalition Avenir Québec government tabled Bill 9, which aims to build on existing secularism measures passed under Premier François Legault, including Bill 21.

In September, the Quebec government proposed a ban on public prayer, prompting criticism from religious leaders. Archbishop Christian Lépine of Montreal said at the time that such a policy would undermine basic freedoms in a democratic society, according to Catholic News Agency.

He argued that banning prayer in public could discourage actions that bring people together during periods of economic, social, and environmental stress. “At its core, to forbid public prayer would be somewhat like forbidding thought itself,” he wrote in a letter published on Sept. 2.

The archbishop said the proposal would clash with both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Quebec’s own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. He also called it incompatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Lépine said Pope Francis’ 2022 penitential pilgrimage to Canada, which included a stop in Quebec City, might have been prohibited under such a law.