FRANCE:POPE BENEDICT XVI will arrive in Paris today for his first visit to the "eldest daughter" of the Catholic Church since he succeeded Pope John Paul II. The 81-year-old pontiff will make 11 speeches in 72 hours, writes Lara Marlowe
The high points of the visit will be a lecture on the church and culture this afternoon, a Mass for 250,000 people on the Esplanade des Invalides in Paris tomorrow, and another Mass, for 200,000 in Lourdes on Sunday, which will be attended by at least 1,500 Irish pilgrims from the diocese of Meath.
Before leaving Lourdes on Monday, the pope will perform a special Mass for the sick and handicapped.
The visit will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin before Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, and the pope will twice traverse the "jubilee path" of sites associated with the saint.
But the visit also has important political, doctrinal and religious implications.
President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni will meet the pope at Orly airport, after which both men will deliver speeches at the Élysée Palace touching on the delicate theme of secularism.
Mr Sarkozy shocked many French people with a speech in Rome last December in which he seemed to question the secularism enshrined in the 1905 French law on the separation of church and state.
He advocates "positive secularism", which would reserve a greater place for faith in French society.
The pope appreciates Mr Sarkozy's ideas. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi says his speech on the church and culture will be "the most awaited moment" of the visit.
He will deliver the address before 700 representatives of French cultural life, including writers, philosophers, theatre directors, musicians, historians, scientists and newspaper editors, in the Collège des Bernardins, a magnificent medieval building in the Latin Quarter, just restored to be the Catholic cultural centre.
In a "Message to the French" on the eve of his visit, Benedict XVI told this "beloved nation" that he is visiting France "as a messenger of peace and fraternity".
The pope has been a member of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences since 1992. He will visit the academy, under the dome of the Institut de France, before tomorrow morning's Mass.
"I have several times had the joy to visit and appreciate [France's] generous tradition of welcome and tolerance, as well as the solidity of her Christian faith and her high human and spiritual culture," Benedict XVI noted in his message.
An opinion poll published yesterday by Le Parisien newspaper showed that 76 per cent of French people find Benedict XVI "conservative", while only 29 per cent believe he is "modern".
Traditionalist French Catholics welcome this pope's encouragement of Mass in Latin and other signs that the church is returning to pre-Vatican II liturgy, but more liberal Catholics believe the church is going backwards.
For 24 years, as John Paul II's guardian of doctrine and faith, the former Cardinal Josef Ratzinger was the equivalent of the Vatican's interior minister, known here as the Panzer Kardinal.
"The French . . . see him as a policeman. The fact he is German doesn't help improve his image in France," Isabelle de Gaulmyn, author of Benedict XVI, the Misunderstood Pope, said.
"Benedict XVI is an old professor . . . Unlike his predecessor, he has nothing of the rock star or great traveller," Bernard Lecomte, author of Benedict XVI, the Last European Pope, said.
Throughout the four-day visit, Benedict XVI will be compared to his predecessor. "It's natural," Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, the Archbishop of Paris, told Le Parisien.
"John Paul II was pope for 27 years. He came to France every two or three years on average. In the mind of a French person, John Paul II is still pope," the cardinal said.
150 YEARS: primate among Irish marking anniversary
The Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady will be in Lourdes this weekend where he will attend ceremonies during the visit of Pope Benedict there to mark the 150th anniversary of apparitions at the grotto to St Bernadette.
Also in Lourdes will be 1,400 pilgrims from the diocese of Meath who will be taking part in the 60th pilgrimage from that diocese to the shrine. They will be led by Bishop Michael Smith who this year marks his 25th anniversary as Bishop of Meath.
The pilgrims will include 220 people who are ill and their helpers.
More than 3,000 pilgrims from the Dublin archdiocese return to the capital today after completing their annual pilgrimage to Lourdes, which had been continuing all week. The pilgrimage was led by Archbishop Diarmuid Martin, who was accompanied by his predecessor as archbishop, Cardinal Desmond Connell, and some 50 priests of the diocese.
Both Archbishop Martin and Cardinal Connell concelebrated Mass at the shrine yesterday.
PATSY McGARRY