The National Museum of Natural History in Paris may evict the Teilhard de Chardin Foundation from its premises after staff complained that its presence violated France's official separation of Church and State, writes Tom Heneghan.

The Foundation, which keeps the papers of the late Jesuit palaeontologist and geologist and promotes his teleological view of evolution, has maintained a rent-free office in the museum's headquarters at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris since 1962.

This arrangement came to light because a museum renovation project planned to relocate the Foundation office in a way that reduced the media library's floor space by one fifth. The Communist-led General Confederation of Labour (CGT) trade union denounced the Foundation's presence as a violation of the principle of laïcité and wrote to the Education and Research Ministry demanding that it be evicted. The museum management has suspended the renovation until the issue can be resolved. The CGT complaint focused on the fact the Foundation's office also housed the Association of the Friends of Teilhard de Chardin, a group, it said, that "proselytises for openly religious purposes".

The Association, which has at least eight foreign chapters including the British Teilhard Assocation, says it tries to show how Teilhard's thought helps the young see that mankind has a future. During his life (1881-1955), Teilhard was criticised by the Vatican for his mystical view of evolution.

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