Notre-Dame de Paris reopens without the Pope, for Macron a shadow in the picture of his successful bet?

NOTRE-DAME – A new quarrel between the ancients and the moderns. The official and pompous reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, after more than 5 years of work, will take place under the eyes of numerous personalities from all over the world. However, alongside Donald Trump, one particularly eminent name will be missing: Pope Francis.

The sovereign pontiff preferred to send a message which will be read during a highlight of the ceremonies planned for this Saturday, December 7, an event that specialists consider far too mundane for him. “ He never considered coming. He was insistently invited several times by the Élysée. He was also invited in a more formal way by the Archbishop of Paris too », details with the HuffPost Arnaud Bevilacqua, deputy head of the Everyday Religion department The Cross.

An end of refusal that the Élysée would have taken particularly badly according to our colleagues from Mondeespecially since Pope Francis will be visiting Ajaccio a week later. What trigger “ an angry phone call » from the Élysée to the Archbishop of Ajaccio, Cardinal François-Xavier Bustillo, according to the evening daily. Is the Pope deliberately ignoring the reopening of this religious and emblematic monument of the country which prides itself on being “the eldest daughter of the Church”?

Strained relations between Macron and François?

Our colleagues from L’Express do not hesitate to talk about quarrels that have been going on for a while between the French authorities and the Church. However, Emmanuel Macron displays an unfailing familiarity with the Pope, whom he has already met five times. However, never on a state visit.

« We are in a media game where Emmanuel Macron makes demonstrations of supposedly reciprocal affection. But it is a staging dissociated from political realities, with disputes over migrants or the end of life for example (..) The Pope is not fooled by the posture of the president who, according to him, has interesting at the crossroads of secularism and religion, but it is always without concrete consequences », also details with the HuffPost François Mabille, researcher at CNRS and director of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion within IRIS.

Rome does not intend to let its agenda be dictated and too bad if for Emmanuel Macron, the papal presence would have made the celebration even more beautiful while “ celebrating his successful bet as well as the political voluntarism he demonstrated and which was praised », help Arnaud Bevilacqua.

France and Europe do not interest the Pope

However, this should not be seen as personal enmity, assure the two specialists. The absence of the Pope at the reopening ceremony has less to do with his relationship with Macron than with a form of disinterest in France. Just like other European countries.

« This type of event does not fit at all with the themes that the pope has been deploying since the start of his pontificate. As much as Benoit 16 would have moved, but for François what is important are the peripheries, the younger generations, he does not have a heritage vision. With Notre-Dame de Paris, we have a cultural and social event, in opposition to popular religiosity in Corsica for example”continues François Mabille. To the old, secular Europe, Francis prefers, for example, the dynamism of the dashing southern countries.

All the more so, says Arnaud Bevilacqua, that at the Vatican, the Parisian event is compared to the mixed memory of the coronation of Napoleon in 1802, in the Parisian cathedral, by Pope Pius VII. A bitter prologue to the years of very strong tensions that would follow between Rome and the Empire.

The rumor of Elysian annoyance is also echoed by the mine-clearing operations of the French episcopate. “ No, the Pope does not despise France », « no the pope never considered going to Notre-Dame », insists the Archbishop of Ajaccio in an interview with Figaro as if to justify that the Holy Father preferred the Isle of Beauty to the Isle of the City. “ We can clearly see that Cardinal Bustillo is handling this somewhat urgently. The problem is that this absence actually highlights the fragility of the French episcopate, and that this ultimately refers to the weakness of Catholicism in France. », concludes François Mabille.

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