Pope Leo’s Triomphe Français

The bones of Maximillian Robespierre must be rattling in Paris’s Catacombs in the wake of Pope Leo XIV’s triumphant turn at the City of Light this weekend. Robespierre, a guru with the guillotine before he lost his own neck, founded the “Cult of the Supreme Being” to replace the Catholic Church once the ancien régime fell at the hands of the French Revolution. It appears, though, as if the French are not through with faith.Some 800,000 people lined the Champs-Élysées on Sunday to greet the Bishop of Rome at a Mass en plein air. Photos were captured of priests taking confession along the street. The Telegraph relates that the Vicar of Christ received a “rock-star welcome” at a city gripped by “Pope-mania.” The pope paraphrased the Psalmist to declare that it “is truly good and pleasant when brothers and sisters come together and glorify the greatness of God.”France’s sobriquet as the “eldest daughter of the Church” dates to the baptism of Clovis I, King of the Franks, in 496 of the common era. In the years since Clovis took the plunge, though, France has also hewn a reputation as a bulwark of secularism. Its brand of state secularism, known as laïcité, is braided into the Republic’s constitution. While it now applies to all religions, it was first used to keep the Church at bay.Now, though, Vatican data suggest something of a return to the Church of Rome. Annual baptisms of persons above the age of seven have increased 35 percent in France between 2019 and 2024, compared with 23 percent in Spain and just 2 percent in Italy. America has seen an 8 percent drop. The Wall Street Journal reports that some French are “turning back to the Catholic Church as a reaction to the country’s deeply entrenched secularism.”On Monday Pope Leo is due to honor a former French foreign minister, Robert Schuman. As far back as 1948 Schuman, who had himself been interrogated by the Gestapo, nearly sent to the Dachau concentration camp, and alerted the world to the Holocaust, was arguing that the Jewish fight for survival in the Middle East put them in danger of reenacting toward the Arabs what had been done to the Jews by the Nazis. He was a founding figure of the European Union.The Pope’s visit, in any event, comes as the race for president of the Fifth Republic is beginning to come into focus. Voting is a mere seven months away. President Emmanuel Macron is a lame duck à l’orange. The front-runner, Marine Le Pen, was in attendance on Sunday. She told Le Monde that it was “only natural” for her to come to hear the pontiff’s “message of peace, harmony and hope. I think the French people need that right now.”When Madame Le Pen was asked about Pope Leo’s defense of a liberal immigration policy, she responded “He is the Pope, not a presidential candidate; we mustn’t confuse the two.” Similar points have been made by both President Trump and Vice President Vance — himself a Catholic convert — in respect of the pontiff’s criticism of the war with Iran. Our Jennifer Doherty reports that the pope on Friday issued a veiled criticism of the 47th president. Mr. Macron did not make the brief stroll to the Champs-Élysées from the Élysée Palace Sunday. He was represented by his wife, Brigitte. The president appeared with the pontiff on Friday, though, as our A.R. Hoffman reports. The successor of Saint Peter declined Mr. Macron’s offer for a private tour of the rebuilt Notre-Dame Cathedral. Long after Mr. Macron departs, the visit of an American pontiff appears likely to be remembered as a watershed.

Pope Leo’s Triomphe Français

Pope Leo’s Triomphe Français

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