Macron will welcome the Pope in France, but not at Notre-Dame de Paris as he wanted

POLITICS – Temptation Island. Emmanuel Macron will once again welcome Pope Francis to France, a little over a year after his visit to Marseille, but not for the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, as he hoped. The sovereign pontiff actually preferred a trip to Corsica, on December 15, a week after high mass in the cathedral, organized five years after the fire.

The Argentine Jesuit, who will celebrate his 88th birthday in a few days, will arrive in Ajaccio at 9 a.m. and leave shortly after 6 p.m., according to the program published by the Holy See this Saturday, November 23. He will deliver two speeches and preside over a mass in the afternoon at the Casone green theater, before meeting with President Emmanuel Macron.

Coincidence of the calendar, or not, this lightning visit is scheduled on the occasion of a congress on religiosity in the Mediterranean, a few days after the reopening of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, for which Francis declined the invitation launched by France last year. “I’m not going to Paris!” “, he ended up blurting out last September, a bit annoyed, on the plane bringing him back from a tour of South-East Asia and Oceania.

Why this choice?

A decision received (very) coolly at the Élysée, according to the story of several media, where the head of state insisted on the presence of the Pope in front of the towers of Notre-Dame. To the point of suggesting, for a time, that the presence of Emmanuel Macron in Ajaccio was not assured in the event of a papal visit. “We will notify”replied an advisor to the president in the columns of Monde at the beginning of November, explaining despite everything that “aAfter seven years of power, we learn not to have misplaced pride. »

Faced with the astonishment aroused by the choice of Corsica, several French bishops highlighted Francis' attachment to “peripheries”, its calendar constraints in Rome, or the strong Catholic tradition of the island. “The star of the reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris is Notre-Dame de Paris” and Francis did not want “look away from him on this occasion”explains the president of the conference of bishops of France, Mgr Eric de Moulins Beaufort, quoted by AFP.

From Malta to Sicily via the Greek island of Lesbos, Francis has visited the Mediterranean basin several times, a region which focuses several priorities of his pontificate, such as interreligious dialogue or the reception of migrants. But this is the first time that a pope has visited Corsica, a French region benefiting from the status of a single territorial collectivity and whose degree of autonomy is currently being discussed between the State and local elected officials.

The head of the Catholic Church has already visited French territory twice since the start of his pontificate in 2013, to Strasbourg in 2014 and to Marseille in September 2023. However, he has never visited France of State, his two trips having been devoted to European institutions on the one hand, and to a seminar on the Mediterranean on the other.

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