The visit of François Hollande to Pope Francis
On January 24, 2014, the President of the French Republic, François Hollande, had a private audience lasting 35 minutes with the Pope. He was accompanied by a delegation of about fifteen persons whom he presented to the Supreme Pontiff at the conclusion of the audience, among whom were: the Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls, the militant ecologist Nicolas Hulot, Father Georges Vandenbeusch, a priest of the vicinity of Paris who was kidnapped in mid-November by the Islamist group Boko Haram in Cameroon and then set free on December 31 of last year, as well as the editor of the daily newspaper La Croix, Madame Dominique Quinio. On this occasion, the French head of State offered the Pope several engravings by Maurice Boutet de Monvel dating from 1929 and entitled Saint François d’Assise. “That’s your patron, too,” the Pope remarked in an aside to the President of the Republic, to whom he delivered a large medal commemorating his pontificate, in a white box.
In a press release, the Holy See noted several components of this interview: “In the context of the defense and the promotion of the dignity of the human person, various matters of current relevance were discussed, such as the family, bioethics, respect for religious communities and the protection of places of worship.... Attention then turned to matters of an international nature, such as poverty and development, migration and the environment,” the communiqué explains, adding that it extended “in particular to the issue of conflicts in the Middle East and in some regions of Africa, and hope was expressed that peaceful social co-existence may be re-established in the countries affected, respecting the rights of all, especially ethnic and religious minorities.”
In a statement presented to the Saint Louis Center of the French Institute right after his visit to the Vatican, François Hollande first of all emphasized the “respect of the French people for the message of peace, solidarity and justice” proclaimed by Pope Francis. The President of the Republic then listed the “converging” viewpoints of France and the Holy See on “major international topics,” beginning with the situation in Central Africa, where France recently intervened. More generally, François Hollande called for France and the Holy See to continue to work, within the scope of their “respective responsibilities”, so that Africa, “which is experiencing poverty”, might be at the heart of international concerns.
With regard to Syria, while speaking with the Pope he said he hoped that the Vatican “could welcome the Syrian democratic coalition so as to make it quite clear that peace must be sought through a political solution that allows for pluralism” and in this way to take steps toward the “transition”. The French President also recalled the importance of “stopping the fighting” and “allowing humanitarian aid to arrive”.
The head of State renewed the commitment of France to finding “a negotiated solution between Israel and the Palestinians” and to protecting the holy places on site. “Free access to the holy places must be guaranteed within the framework of the negotiations in progress,” he said. François Hollande also assured the Pope that he shares the latter’s concern about the Christians in the Middle East, who “must be supported and protected everywhere”. “France has rallied to the position that the Christians should stay where they have always lived and that they should not go the route of exile,” he declared.
The environment was an important theme of the discussions between François Hollande and the Supreme Pontiff. The head of State admitted that the Pope had repeated to him a formula that he had already used during a recent general audience: “God always forgives, human beings sometimes, but nature never.” As for the “last part of the formula,” François Hollande remarked, there was a “complete convergence” of their views. (Sic! A brazen remark, for someone who legalized unnatural marriage!!)
The President of the Republic acknowledged that the Vatican had long ago taken the theme of ecology to heart, but that the message was now more “audible”. Shortly before that statement, Nicolas Hulot, the French President’s special envoy for the protection of the planet, assured journalists that François Hollande had made official the invitation to the Pope to travel to France for the purpose of a conference on climate that will be held there in 2015.
The Supreme Pontiff and the French President turned out to be in agreement also about the “excesses of globalization”, and France expressed its “full support of the position of Pope Francis about human trafficking”.
Although François Hollande did not mention social topics that have caused tensions between the government and some French Catholics, he reaffirmed the position of France in favor of the freedoms of religion, of opinion and of conscience. France, he added, “resolutely” opposes “all anti-religious acts, particularly in places of worship. This applies to all religions, including the Catholic faith, and it applies to all their acts, without distinction.” Without going into detail, the President of the Republic stressed that “debate with the Catholic Church was possible given full respect for secularity”.
Hollande’s intentions are not very Catholic
In order to understand the reason for François Hollande’s visit to the Vatican, despite his declared atheism, we have to go back to recent statements by Constance Rivière, a member of the French Cabinet in charge of institutions, society and public freedoms, who thought that the “marriage for all” campaign which was opposed by many Catholics in 2013 had created a line of division between the government and one sector of Catholics. That is why there is, in her opinion, a willingness today (a “necessity” would be more precise –Editor’s note) to dialogue and come together. In going to see the Pope, François Hollande “is sending a strong message of dialogue and attention to the Catholics, in the world in general and in France in particular”.
Shortly before his visit to the Vatican, several young Catholic laymen had written a petition to the Pope to “make him aware of the uneasiness and concern experienced by many Catholics in France when confronted with the promotion of major attacks on the fundamental rights of the human person (the Taubira Law [allowing ‘same-sex marriage’], medically assisted procreation, surrogate motherhood, human embryo research, euthanasia, gender selection, etc.) and with the attacks to which they are subjected every day (the media campaign of vilification, profanation of churches, etc.).” This letter in the form of a petition that gathered more than 100,000 signatures was delivered to the Apostolic Nuncio in Paris, Abp. Luigi Ventura, for him to forward to the Supreme Pontiff.
In the January 9, 2014, issue of Le Figaro, Jim Jarrassé noted the real motives for this visit: they concern elections: “By little gestures, the executive is trying to win back the hearts of Catholics.” Indeed, “the radicalization of the conflict surrounding the adoption of the law about marriage for all, followed by the debate on medically assisted procreation (MAP), only aggravated their disaffection: in March the average popularity figures for the President of the Republic amounted to 36% among practicing Catholics, as opposed to 48% in the population as a whole.... As the spring elections approach, this growing disaffection worries the electoral experts of the Socialist Party. For the Catholic vote could prove to be decisive in the municipal elections, particularly in Western France, where the Left had managed to capture part of that electorate, which had been disappointed by Nicolas Sarkozy. ‘The gains made by Hollande were in the center-right, affiliated with a Catholic tradition. With the “marriage for all”, the Socialist Party has just alienated what was the basis of its success during the last elections. This is an enormous electoral mistake,’ the demographer Hervé Le Bras commented last spring in an interview on the program Rue 89.”
With intentions like these, we won’t be able to tell whether François Hollande’s visit to the Pope was a success or a failure until the next municipal elections on March 23 and 30.
(Sources: VIS/Apic/Imedia/Figaro – DICI no. 289 dated January 31, 2014)
