VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis will visit the French Mediterranean island of Corsica in December, days after skipping the reopening of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral which was ravaged by a fire in 2019, the Vatican said on Saturday.

Pope Francis, 87, declined an invitation from French President Emmanuel Macron to attend the Notre Dame reopening ceremony in Paris on Dec 7. He will however head to Corsica’s capital Ajaccio for a conference on the Catholic faith in the Mediterranean one week later on Dec 15, the Vatican said.

Some French bishops were “annoyed” by the pope’s decision to stay away from the Notre Dame gala, according to one bishop. But the head of the Bishops’ Conference of France (CEF) Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort said: “The star of the Notre Dame reopening ceremony is Notre Dame itself.” The pope had not wanted his presence to be a distraction from the essential point of the occasion, he added. “It’s not a snub aimed at France,” said another bishop.

Pope Francis’s one-day trip to Corsica will be the first papal visit to the island, where 90 per cent of its 350,000 population is Catholic, according to the local Church, and religious traditions remain deeply rooted.

He will give two speeches, preside over a mass and meet Macron during his nine hours on the island, the Vatican said. “It is a historic event, we will give ourselves the extraordinary means to put on an exceptional welcome for the Holy Father,” said Bishop of Ajaccio Francois-Xavier Bustillo said in a video posted on social media.

Pope Francis, who will celebrate his 88th birthday on Dec 17, has been to France twice since becoming head of the worldwide Catholic Church in 2013. He visited Strasbourg in 2014, where he addressed the European Parliament, and last year went to Marseille for a meeting of Mediterranean area bishops, where he met Macron. He has yet to make a state visit to France, one of Europe’s main majority-Catholic countries.Published in Dawn, November 24th, 2024