France in the smell of holiness?

Lhe name of Jean-Marc Aveline being whispering behind the scenes of the conclave, France is starting to dream of a French pope. Do not pack: the Archbishop of Marseille, recently cardinal, who therefore does not master the curia and has only got to Italian recently, remains outsider. But an outsider among … the favorite “papabili”. Yes, he could create the surprise, with his good -looking look at the Jean XXIII – this pope, son of peasants, who looked like a country priest and reformed the church by proposing Vatican II. Mgr Aveline embodies an opening Catholicism, in the line of François whose proximity allowed him to quickly climb the ladder – Archbishop of Marseille (2019), Cardinal (2022), president of the conference of Bishops of France (2025). It would be a historical choice, since such an event has not arrived from the XIV^e century, and the pontifical installation in Avignon, where seven French popes succeeded each other between 1305 and 1378.

Rome brushes from another name, more in court this one: he is well placed at the heart of the Vatican machine, he has been running in mind for a long time, which makes him a target-the Italian press says it in loss of speed (which nobody really knows, secret of the conclave obliges). Its election, if it took place, would also allow France to regain influence at the top of the church.

Because the Italian Pietro Parolin, of which it is a question, secretary of state of the Vatican, number two therefore, the diplomat in the shadow of François, who presides over the conclave, is Francophile. The prelate speaks our language well, and appreciates following the Tour de France cycling. He was last January in Paris where he participated in a conference at the Quai d’Orsay commemorating the centenary of the Poincaré-Cerretti agreements of 1924 between France and the Holy See, establishing a legal status for the Catholic Church in France. He called for “an evolving and dynamic secularism” and he took advantage of this stay to meet the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noël Barrot and have a long exchange with Prime Minister François Bayrou in Matignon-especially about the end of life. Pietro Parolin is also expected this May 11 in Argenteuil (Val-d’Oise) to close the ostension ceremonies of the Tunic of Christ, preserved in the city’s basilica and exceptionally out of its reliquary.

Read too “The conclave is an unthought”: the cardinals confide in the election of the next popeIn this sphere of “papabili” close to France, very or further, we must not forget either the Guinean Cardinal Robert Sarah, who is one of the serious candidates, even if he will be reached by the age limit (80 years) on June 15 and that his radical side is divisive. This herald of an identity Catholicism, obsessed with Islamic expansion and the decadence of the West, frightens the opening Catholics. The fact remains that Cardinal Sarah, who was educated by French Missionaries Spiritaine, is very attached to France, whose history and culture he knows perfectly, where he regularly stays, where his books and conferences, very supported by the conservative media, are very successful.

Through these three champions, the 2025 conclave, a jubilee year for Catholics (the event takes place every 25 years), will it reconnect with a great tradition of the papacy, that of a sovereign Pontiff Francophile?

“We have a pope! »

A tradition which, in the contemporary era, dates back to Pius XII, preaching in 1937 to Notre-Dame de Paris, when he was still the Cardinal Pacelli: “Here, it is the very soul of France, the soul of the older girl of the Church, who spoke to my soul! A line prosecuted by Paul VI, also petri of French culture and perfectly speaking our language, and his successor John XXIII, who was non -apostolic nuncio in Paris from 1944 to 1953.

Even today, despite the decline of the Catholic religion, France keeps a certain aura in Rome, having some emblematic places-Saint-Louis des Français and its caravivals, La Trinité-des-Monts, La Villa Bonaparte where its embassy is located near the Holy See …-, grouped in what is called “the pious establishments”, an institution which draws its roots in the Carolingian era. A flame that continues to maintain the Dominican religious and an ambassador as discreet as active, Florence Mangin, at a position used by the philosopher Jacques Maritain – who marked the history of the Church – and the journalist Wladimir d’Ormesson. French people still hold key positions in the Vatican, notably Mgr Dominique Mamberti to which – as a cardinal protodiacre – it will be the mission of launching the traditional “Habemus Papam! »From the Saint-Pierre Basilica balcony. And even a Frenchwoman, the nun Nathalie Becquart, propelled by François as a worker ankle of the Grand Synod of the Bishops – with the right to vote, in the same way as the prelates …

But we are far from the big hours of the Cardinals Villot-who was at the post of Parolin, cardinal secretary of state for ten years (1969-1979)-, Etchegarray, Tauran, Poupart, who had hands on the executive, diplomacy and culture. It was the time of the Jean-Paul II and Benoît XVI popes which kept showing a great interest in our country. The first went there eight times – as much as in his native Poland – and the second, if he only came once (he only made 25 apostolic trips) in 2008 stayed for four days and showed a fine knowledge of French culture, and language, which he spoke with precision. We have witnessed, and we still remember his deep, solid, prophetic discourse on the “origins of Western theology and the roots of European culture”, listened to in a silence of cathedral by the greatest French intellectuals and scientists, for the inauguration of the Bernardins College, from this “emblematic” place of Western monasticism. “Young monks have lived here to learn deeply at their vocation and to live their mission well. This place, does he still evoke something for us or do we only meet only a world now over? Had launched the German pontiff.

“France, older girl of the church, what did you make the promises of your baptism?” »»

Benoît XVI had thus challenged our old dechristianized country, almost thirty years after Jean-Paul II, in 1980, at the start of his pontificate, posing the foot at Le Bourget airport: “France, eldest daughter of the church, what did you make promises of your baptism? »»

These two European popes testified to a sincere affection for a country shaped by Christianity, despite the enraged revolutionary and the Napoleon Bonaparte kitchen snatching from the hands of Pope Pius VII his crown to crowd himself, after allowing the return of the Catholic religion to the country of Clovis and Charlemagne.

François, he was more distant. This is the least we can say. If he gratified the European Parliament in Strasbourg of a visit in 2014-to sermn the EU, “tired grandmother”-, he avoided visiting the Alsatian cathedral, claiming that he came to the European Parliament, not in France. Argument taken up almost ten years later when he came to Marseille, the city of his friend Avline – certainly, he was the first pope to set foot in Clement VII in 1533 – where he spoke more of migrants and the Mediterranean than in France. And, as we remember, he chooses to honor with his presence a conference on popular piety in Corsica, rather than the inauguration of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral. Bounding for this celebration to a brief speech, read by its representative, the apostolic nuncio Celestino Migliore, in the form of a sermon not very pleasant for the present ears: “May the rebirth of this admirable church constitute a prophetic sign of the revival of the church in France. »»

The Argentinian pope, however nourished at the theological work (considerable) of the French Jesuits, in particular of the Father Henri de Lubac (theologian prohibited by Pius XII, promoted to Vatican II by John XXII, created Cardinal by John Paul II), has somewhat neglected our country-in the same way as other old nations like Germany and Spain, in particular-attentive to the peripheries, and states left for the world order. Admittedly, he promoted several French cardinals-the Marseillais Jean-Marc Aveline, Corsica François Bustillo, the Nonce in the United States Christophe Pierre, the Archbishop of Algiers, born in Lyon, Jean-Paul Vesco … but at the very end of his pontificate, and while “the eldest daughter of the church” was no longer represented in the sacred college than by Cardinals.

No French pope from the XIV^e century, and not one in Rome since the year millet

France has not had a pope in Rome since the reign of Sylvestre II, known as “the Pope of the year Mil”, born Gerbert d’Aurillac, in Aquitaine, around 945, and only French pope practicing in Italy. And she did not have a pontiff just in the whole history of the papacy from the XIV^e century, where it monopolized-for almost seventy-five years-the pontifical seat in Avignon.

It was Bertrand de Got, who became Clément V in 1305, born in Guyenne (currently in Gironde), who launched the movement, when the news of his election reached him when he was in his archbishopric of Bordeaux, and – seriously ill – refused to join Rome, where epidemics and a heated people raged. He got caught in Lyon, settled in Avignon, in the heart of the Pontifical Lands of Comtat Venaissin, and created ten cardinals – at the time they were few – “of which nine were French and four of them, his nephews”, as John W. O’malley relates in his fascinating History of the popes, from Pierre to François (Lessius). After Clement V, succeeded six French popes, and among the 134 cardinals created at the time, 112 were also French, recalls the Jesuit historian, who was a professor at the University of Georgetown, in Washington (he died in 2022).

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Answer

This French reign on the papacy ended when Grégoire XI, born Pierre Roger de Beaufort in Rosiers-d’Egletons in Corrèze-like his uncle, Clément VI, Pope before him …-, returned, on September 17, 1377, in Rome, and was established, the first, in the Vatican-rather than at the Palais du Latran. After his death, fourteen months later, the cardinals chose the Archbishop of Bari, Bartolomeo Prignano, under stress. The conclave was then held by the French – they were twelve cardinals for only three Italians and a Spaniard -, but Rome was embraced by rioters refusing that Avignon becomes the capital of the Papacy. It was the start of the Italian reign on the government of the Catholic Church.

Our old Christian nation, which was the cradle of a multitude of great religious orders, which gave so many saints, built a flowering of churches, abbeys and cathedrals, will she be wragged by a pope who will show her affection, at the time when Catholics take up hope, under the effect of an exponential growth of adults and adolescents? There is a man who, from where he is, would be touched in the heart. This prelate, a Jew converted to Catholicism, close to John Paul II, and which also appeared in his time as a “papabile”, it was the one that was the emblematic and the prophetic archbishop of Paris: Jean-Marie Lustiger.