The sovereign pontiff's plane landed this Sunday morning at 8:50 a.m. at Ajaccio airport. Pope Francis is passing through Corsica for a whirlwind visit which should end around 6 p.m. after he has spoken with Emmanuel Macron.
For the Pope, this historic day of visit promises to be busy. In particular, he must celebrate a mass and greet, in a popemobile, the faithful who have come en masse.
This Sunday morning, at the Palais des Congrès in Ajaccio, he spoke at a conference on popular piety in the Mediterranean. He defended “a concept of secularism which is not static and fixed, but evolving and dynamic”.
He thus wishes for a secularism “capable of adapting to different or unforeseen situations, and of promoting constant cooperation between civil and ecclesiastical authorities for the good of the entire community, each remaining within the limits of its competence and of its space. »
A religious practice in decline
The pope recognized that faith and practice are in decline in Europe, with Corsica having 80% Catholics for 350,000 inhabitants, according to the Vatican.
The sovereign pontiff, however, warns against “hasty” analyzes of this decline and the “ideological judgments which sometimes oppose, even today, Christian culture and secular culture”.
A concept enshrined in the French Constitution, secularism gives rise to passionate debates in France, between supporters of a “liberal” secularism where everyone can assert their freedom of conscience as long as this does not threaten the freedom of others, and supporters of a “universalist” secularism aiming to emancipate the individual from religious narratives.
The “liberal” vision is regularly accused of giving in to communitarianism, while the “universalist” vision is often criticized as a red herring of Islamophobia.
The Pope is alarmed by the risk of instrumentalization of piety
Secularism has given rise to controversies in recent years in France, at the start of the 2023 school year over the wearing of the abaya at school or in December 2023 during the lighting of a Hanouka candle by the chief rabbi in the Elysée.
While he also welcomed the vigor of popular piety in the Mediterranean, the Pope was alarmed by the “risk” of it being “contaminated” by “fatalistic or superstitious beliefs” or “instrumentalized by groups who intend to strengthen their identity in a polemical way, by fueling particularisms, oppositions, exclusionary attitudes.”
In Corsica, a new far-right nationalist movement, Mossa Palatina, prides itself on “reaffirming the primacy of Catholicism” and assures that “Corsica will never be Lampedusa”, this Italian island where many migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean land. A speech that is the opposite of that of the Pope, who defends the reception of migrants.
