The visit takes place after the killing of the priest Hamel by terrorists. The words of the Pope about Islam. The issue resolved over the appointment of the ambassador to the Holy See.
After the killing of Father Jacques Hamel, an 86-year-old French priest who was slain - while celebrating Mass - by two young French terrorists with Maghreb origins last 26 July, in the parish of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, in the diocese of Rouen, in Normandy - an attack claimed by the so-called Islamic State (Isis) - French President François Hollande will meet with the Pope tomorrow.
Hollande “will travel to Rome on Wednesday, 17 August. He will be received in private audience by Pope Francis at the Vatican,” announced the Elysée Palace in a brief statement. According to the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, the French President will visit St. Louis of the French, the national church of France in Rome - a stone’s throw from Piazza Navona - for a moment of silence in memory of the victims of terrorism, and in particular in memory of Father Hamel; then he will go to a private meeting with the Pontiff. Hollande is expected by the Pope at 17:00 in the Paul VI Hall. With him, there will also be Interior Minister Benard Cazeneuve, the ambassador to the Holy See Philippe Zeller, the diplomatic adviser Jacques Odibert and the head of protocol, Frederic Biller. After meeting with Francis, Hollande and his entourage will be received by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin in the Apostolic Palace.
The French Socialist President was received by the Pope for the first time on 24 January 2014. Unlike his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy - also received by the Pope in strictly private form last 21 March - Hollande did not publicly take possession of the office of honorary proto-canon at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, an honor that traditionally belongs to the French president. If that meeting did not appear particularly warm - just before going to Rome, Hollande had referred to the the pope as “useful” in an interview, as the controversy loomed between the French episcopate and the Elysée Palace on gay marriage, and the geopolitical vision of Paris and the Apostolic Palace did not match on several accounts - the barometer of bilateral relations between the Holy See and France, in subsequent months, turned negative due to the situation concerning Laurent Stefanini.
The diplomat, who at the time was the Elysée Chief of Protocol, had been designated by the French government for the French Embassy at the Holy See. It was January of 2015 and his name, in the following days, came out even before Rome had granted its diplomatic agreement. A practicing Catholic, and former deputy of the same French Embassy at the Vatican from 2001 to 2005, Stefanini is also homosexual. The French press, in the spring of last year, suggested that this was the precise reason for the rejection by the Vatican, while from the Vatican the leaked explanation for the non-agreement was based instead on political motivations. For many months the issue remained locked in a virtual stalemate, even when - as revealed in the French satirical weekly, Le Canard Enchainé - on 17 April, Pope Francis privately received the designated Ambassador at Casa Santa Marta.
In the following months, the Elysée Palace, informally or openly, reiterated that Stefanini was the only nomination for the position. From the Vatican, there was no response. A diplomatic freeze - which did not, however, prevent the Holy See and the French government from converging in support of the UN climate summit that was held last year in December, precisely in Paris. On 6 April, finally, Hollande appointed Stefanini as French Ambassador to UNESCO. And then in June, Paris appointed Philippe Zeller for Villa Bonaparte, the embassy office, “in place of Bruno Joubert,” read the official statement, the French ambassador to the Holy See until March 2015. A Catholic at the end of his career (he is 63), Zeller, a pupil of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in 1978, will accompany Hollande tomorrow to the meeting with the Pope. “We are grateful for the gesture of France,” said Cardinal Vatican Secretary of State Pietro Parolin to La Croix, in the days following the appointment.
Since that moment, then, France was again hit by terrorism. At first, in Nice, on 14 July, a national holiday; and then, on 26 July, with the attack on Hamel. Whereas in the first case the Pope immediately acted to communicate his solidarity with the “French people” - reassuring the mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi, by telephone, of his willingness to meet with the families of victims - the killing of a priest of the Rouen diocese has sparked a wave of indignation and solidarity with the Catholic Church. “I would like to thank all those who have contacted us with condolences,” said Francis in person during a trip to Poland, “and in a special way the President of France, who wanted to connect with me by phone, like a brother. I thank him.”
Also on the occasion of the Polish trip, however, the Pope said that the world is at war, “but it is not a war of religion” and that “it is not true and it is not fair” to say that Islam is a terrorist religion. The Pope also said a prayer for peace and for the defense against violence and terrorism in the church of Saint Francis in Krakow. On the Sunday following the murder of Hamel, moreover, different imams and believers joined together in response to the call of the main French Islamic organization, the French Council for the Muslim Faith (CFCM), to go to church the following Sunday, to express “solidarity and compassion” to the Christians after “the infamous murder.” Presiding at the celebration in Rouen in memory of Hamel, the archbishop of Rouen, Dominique Lebrun, on 31 July, thanked them thus: “In this way, you affirm the rejection of violence in the name of God. As we heard from your mouths which we know are sincere, this is not Islam.”
The French President, for his part, stated - immediately after the attack on Father Hamel - the intention to contact the Pope “to express the grief of the French people,” and then referred to having spoken on the phone with the Pope, stressing that “when a priest is attacked, the whole of France is affected,” and stating that “everything possible will be done to protect our churches and places of worship.” The same Hollande - who in France must face a difficult political recovery this fall - then met, on the same days, with the French Catholic press, saying he was particularly impressed by the way in which religious leaders have been able to respond to the attack. Tomorrow, finally, the private audience with the Pope.
