Friday, September 05, 2008

Sarkozy, Pope aim to ease France's secularism


Pope Benedict will deliver 11 speeches over four days to an estimated half a million people in Paris and Lourdes.
Vincenzo Pinto/AFP/Getty Images


Canada.com
Peter O'Neil, Europe Correspondent, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, September 05, 2008

PARIS - Pope Benedict's first official visit to France will unite two men who share few similarities beyond their mutual interest in relaxing this country's profoundly strict tradition of separating church and state.

Benedict, who meets President Nicolas Sarkozy shortly after arriving here next Friday, is the head of a church that preaches against abortion, homosexuality, divorce, and extramarital sex to more than one billion members worldwide, including an estimated 13 million Roman Catholics in Canada.

The 81-year-old German Pope will deliver 11 speeches over four days to an estimated half a million people in Paris and Lourdes. He will begin by discussing "the place of religion in France" with Sarkozy, 53, the hyperactive, Ray-Ban-wearing, celebrity-enamoured head of one of the world's most secular countries.

It has been noted here that Sarkozy would be ineligible to receive Holy Communion from the Pope because of his two divorces before his marriage earlier this year to ex-supermodel Carla Bruni, who once said she's "bored with monogamy" and whose list of ex-lovers includes Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Donald Trump.

Yet some analysts say Benedict, because he has a crucial ally in Sarkozy, could have a greater impact in France than his far more popular predecessor John Paul II, who made an emotional final visit here the year before his death in 2005.

Sarkozy has been outspoken in trying to ease the strict 1905 secularism law in France, a country known historically as the church's "oldest daughter" because of its deep Christian roots.

That has created an opening for Benedict, a respected intellectual who speaks fluent French, to gently urge greater public involvement among the country's practising Catholics.
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