2023-09-22 05:45:05
Emmanuel Macron and Pope Francis, during a private audience at the Vatican, October 24, 2022. ABACA
The passion for religion in France is “the first to turn on and the last to turn off”, said Tocqueville. Emmanuel Macron’s plan to attend the giant mass given by Pope Francis, Saturday September 23 in Marseille, has come to remind him in recent days. Invited by the sovereign pontiff to attend the religious ceremony that he will give in the grounds of the Stade-Vélodrome in front of 57,000 people, the President of the Republic, who cultivates cordial relations with the Argentine pope – he will meet on same morning for the fourth time with him, a record –, decided to participate with his wife in this “ festive moment », According to the Elysée. He was immediately accused by the left opposition of “to trample” the religious neutrality of the State.
If elected officials from La France insoumise (LFI), the Communist Party (PCF) and Europe Ecologie-Les Verts (EELV) react strongly to this decision, it is because it comes just three weeks after Emmanuel Macron affirmed that he will not let “nothing pass” on abayas and qamis, clothing now banned in schools in the name of secularism. A decision which could be interpreted by certain French people of Muslim faith as a mark of distrust towards their religion.
The head of state replied on September 15 that he would go to mass as ” president ” of a secular country, but not as a ” Catholic “. “The State is neutral, public services are neutral and we preserve schools too, we reiterated this at the start of the school year,” he added, in reference to the abaya ban. For her part, the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, judges « ridicule » the controversy launched by left-wing oppositions.
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“There were no controversies at the time”
The Elysée recalls that Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, in 1980, was the first to attend a mass of Pope John Paul II on the square in front of Notre-Dame, without this being reproached to him. “But the debate on secularism did not have at all the incandescence at the time that it has had since the beginning of the 2000s”recalls sociologist Philippe Portier, director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Études.
Moreover, we are still demining the Presidency of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron is not at his first mass: he was present at the religious funeral of Johnny Hallyday at the Madeleine church in 2017 and at those of Jacques Chirac at Saint-Sulpice church in 2019, and “there were no controversies at the time.” In the first case, however, elected only a few months ago, the young president came close to making a mistake when, under the gaze of the cameras, he grabbed the bottle brush to bless the singer’s coffin… before changing his mind and rest it.
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