FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT
PARIS — On 22 and 23 September the Pope will be in Marseille for the “Mediterranean Meetings”, during which 120 young people of all religious denominations and bishops from 30 countries will talk about relations between the shores of the Mediterranean and the migration issue. President Emmanuel Macron will welcome him, but Francis wanted to clarify, on August 6, on the plane taking him back to Rome from the youth days in Lisbon, that his visit will be “in Marseille, not in France”. Why this clarification? And why, despite having been invited to the Elysée several times, does the Pope prefer to postpone the long-awaited state visit to Paris?
There is a general reason, and that is the fact that Francis has decided to give priority to small European countries: he has already visited Albania, Cyprus and Malta, but not Spain and Germany, for example, and also France so he has to wait.
Then there are many reasons linked specifically to France: political issues, and perhaps also the personal relationship with Macron. On immigration, at the center of the Mediterranean Meetings, and also on the end of life and secularism, the Pope and France have very distant positions.
Francis has made the defense of migrants one of the cornerstones of his pontificate, while Macron and his Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin are increasingly intransigent on the need to stop entries.
The Vatican then judges France’s insistence on secularism to be excessive, even in schools, with the ban on showing religious symbols in class, and on bioethical issues such as the end of life the distances are destined to increase. So much so that, in order not to cause embarrassment, it was decided to postpone the debate in Parliament on the new law on the end of life, which could contain openings on euthanasia: the discussion should have begun on the eve of the Pope’s arrival, and instead it will be postponed some day.
While the Elysée has been pushing for a bilateral meeting in Paris for some time, the Vatican is reluctant. Thus, after long negotiations, a compromise was found: Macron will be the one to move and go to Marseille, and not the Pope to the Elysée. The president will wait for Francis at the plane’s steps on Saturday afternoon, and then the Pope will participate in a ceremony in memory of the migrants in the basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, protector of Marseille residents and seafarers. The following morning, a private audience between Macron and Francis is scheduled, before the mass at the Velodrome stadium in front of 60 thousand people, which the president should also attend (which is already causing controversy among the French left which is more attentive to secularism).
The relationship between Paris and the Vatican, between Macron and Francis, also seems to be summed up in the very expansive physical gestures of the French president, which in the past have caused dismay in Vatican circles: during his first visit to St. Peter’s, on 26 June 2018, a year after the start of his first mandate, Macron first touched his hand to Francis’ cheek, as if wanting to give him an affectionate pat, then placed his hand on the Pope’s shoulder, a nonchalance prohibited by protocol.
And in his second visit, on November 26, 2021, Macron publicly addressed the Pope on a first-name basis, a display of familiarity that, according to Loup Besmond de Senneville, Vatican correspondent for the Catholic newspaper La Croix, made more than one bishop grit his teeth. In front of the cameras, Macron told Francis “I’ve tired you with my stories”, then adding “Thank you for your patience”.
Faced with so much affection and such a search for familiarity, the Pope seems to want to remain courteous and firm. And on September 22nd he will go “to Marseille, but not to France”.
2023-09-14 14:32:23
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