“I pray for you every day”, assures in a soft voice Brigitte Macron, all dressed in black, to Pope Francis. She has just joined her husband at the end of the 55-minute one-on-one audience granted by the Holy Father to the French President in the Apostolic Palace adjoining Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, for this third meeting between the two men, who like each other and use familiar terms. “I always offer you books,” smiles Emmanuel Macron, handing his host an edition dating from 1796 of the “Treaty for Perpetual Peace” by the philosopher Emmanuel Kant.
Peace, and the means to achieve it, is indeed what occupied most of this conversation “from head of state to head of state”, according to the Elysée, which recalls that the pope “is actor on the international scene. And that the Church, “which speaks to other Churches”, can as such play a role of “lever of dialogue”. In fact, Catholics, and in particular the Sant’Egidio community before which Macron gave a speech on Sunday, October 23, are trying to renew the dialogue between Orthodox Christians in Russia and Ukraine.
Not easy, because “we know how the Orthodox religion is today manipulated by the Russian power”, underlined Emmanuel Macron. Unlike many European leaders and the American Biden, Pope Francis and President Macron share the conviction that dialogue with Russia must be maintained to one day bring Putin back “to the discussion table”.
“Caregivers cannot be asked to kill their patients”
In addition to international crises, have domestic issues been discussed? One of them is particularly burning in the eyes of the Vatican: the debate on the end of life launched by the head of state. Receiving French elected officials on Friday, François had scolded, camping on the traditional position of the church: “We cannot ask caregivers to kill their patients (…) If we kill with justifications, we will end up killing more and more. »
It’s hard to imagine that the two men have overlooked the subject one-on-one. Still, the Vatican press release published at the end of the interview does not mention it. Same silence on the Élysée side, Emmanuel Macron having continued with a lunch with his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella before ending his Roman stay with a visit to the Saint-Jean-de-Latran basilica (of which any French president bears the title of honorary canon) then to the Palatine Hill.