Macron is not trying to trip up the Pope

Emmanuel Macron will not be attending any of the Masses that the Pope will celebrate in France during his visit, from Friday to next Monday. A statement from the Élysée Palace was enough to prompt the newspapers, which are generally anti-Macron, to claim that this was a snub to the Pope, who had declined both the gala dinner at the Élysée Palace and the President’s offer to accompany him to Notre-Dame. In reality, no French head of state (at least in recent times) has ever attended a Mass celebrated by the Pope. Neither Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008 nor Jacques Chirac in 1997 did so. The former sent the then Prime Minister (a Catholic) François Fillon; the latter sent his wife, the very devout Bernadette. Macron will be represented by his wife Brigitte and by Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, a Catholic who, as a boy, had toyed with the idea of becoming a monk. In short, there is no scandal whatsoever, nor can one speak of a break with tradition.

Yet this is standard practice: in a country where the separation of church and state remains clear-cut, and where some have taken issue with the fact that the Pope has even been granted the Place de la Concorde for Saturday’s Eucharistic celebration, the sacred dogma of secularism cannot be disregarded. And so the President will confine himself to receiving Leo XIV with full honours at the Élysée and accompanying him to Metz for the event concerning Europe – and therefore of a more strictly political nature. But the political exploitation has already begun: immediately after the Élysée confirmed the President’s absence, Marion Maréchal Le Pen made it known that she would be in the square with the faithful to pray and join the Pope in prayer. With the presidential elections just a few months away, the race to secure the Élysée Palace among the competing political forces is also being played out through attendance at a Mass. Religion as an instrumentum regni. Nothing new.