The pope’s arrival in Corsica sounds like the reward for three years of intense activity for the bishop of Ajaccio, François Bustillo, who revived the island’s Catholic identity and deployed his own conception of public relations, to Paris, analyzes our journalist Ariane Chemin in a long investigation.
Plains, mountains, dangerous parades… François Bustillo pushes to remote villages, attentive to each name and each face, like an elected official in the countryside. “What could I say to the Corsicans if I don’t know them? »he asks. When his arrival is announced, the villagers come running, with him the Masses are full and end happily with photos, selfies and baskets of donuts, says Ariane Chemin. His meter 90 and his miter, during processions, seem to serve as a marker for a Corsican who is searching for herself.
François Bustillo does not only make pilgrimages. He also says “masses at the summit” on rocky promontories, melted and cast bells, consecrated churches and opened their doors. “What is there to bless?” »he asks when arriving somewhere. Everything: houses and babies, of course, but also cross in the mountains, and even, in October 2023, in Ajaccio, the new head office of Crédit agricole de la Corse, in the presence of the president of the chamber of commerce.
“I really like politics. I always loved, confesses the cardinal, but I assure you, I am not good at power. » He got to know François Hollande and has already met Laurent Wauquiez. Came to meet Raphaël Glucksmann this summer in Cape Corsica. Just debated at the University of Corte with Philippe Guglielmi, the former grand master of the Grand Orient de France, and Chems-Eddine Hafiz, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris. In December 2023, he was received by Emmanuel Macron for a discreet tête-à-tête. And also remains as best as possible with the Saadé family, owner of the essential Corse-Matin.
