The Holy Father is nothing if not peripatetic. Three weeks after the papal visit to Mongolia, he faces a very different challenge with a visit to Marseilles – the first pope to do so since Clement VII in rather less happy circumstances in 1533. It is part of his continuing “Mediterranean meetings”, whereby he has visited various cities around the Mediterranean, to remind us that the sea is a place of encounter and dialogue as well as conflict. Europeans now tend to see it in terms of the numbers of desperate migrants crossing it to escape poverty and conflict in their home countries.
The Pope is meeting the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, twice during the trip. It would be to the good if they could speak frankly in private about a real problem in French political life: the antagonism towards the Catholic Church in political circles and particularly on the Left, which Gavin Mortimer describes in this issue. Macron does not share this animus, but he has failed to challenge it in the way that the relatively new leader of the conservative Republican party, Éric Ciotti, has done. “We need to stop rejecting, caricaturing and insulting all those who claim to have a Christian culture,” says Ciotti. “Being Catholic or Christian is not a stigma.” Pope Francis could and should also attempt to persuade the president not to introduce euthanasia in France.
The Pope has made his support for migrants one of the marks of his pontificate, but he should tread warily on this issue. In the recent destructive riots in Marseilles, most of the rioters were from North African and Muslim communities. They also predominate in drugs-related killings in the city, not least as victims. So, while it is right and proper for Pope Francis to remember desperate migrants drowned in the Mediterranean during his prayer at the city’s memorial to those lost at sea, it would be tactful to forebear to lecture the French on welcoming still more migrants. This visit will require tact, grace – and diplomacy.
