Pope Francis is expected this Sunday in Ajaccio for a visit of a few hours, where he will deliver the closing speech of an international conference on religiosity in the Mediterranean Sea. Two themes which resonate deeply with the pontificate of the Argentine pope which is eagerly awaited by the Corsican population.
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If the reopening of Notre-Dame did not correspond at all to the profile of Pope Francis, an event far too political and too focused on the past, Corsica ticks many boxes. It is a peripheral place, far from the capital and in addition it is an island in the Mediterranean, a sea that Francis celebrates as a crossroads of religions and the practice of a popular faith.
This visit to the Isle of Beauty, which has nearly 3,000 brotherhoods, is also an echo of Francis’ Argentine roots, where popular piety is very strong, reports our correspondent in Rome, Eric Senanque. Jorge Maria Bergoglio’s grandmother took him when he was little to Good Friday processions in the streets of Buenos Aires. Popular piety is “ the Church’s immune system » often repeats the Argentine pontiff, who in 2007, then at the head of the diocese of Buenos Aires, was the main drafter of the Aparecida document, a text signed in Brazil on the orientations of the Church in Latin America, and which reaffirms the importance of popular religion.
This visit to Corsica is also an opportunity for Francis to once again focus on the Mediterranean that he has placed at the heart of his pontificate. After Cyprus, MaltaLesbos or Lampedusa, and a year after his trip to Marseille, the Pope added a new island in the Mediterranean area to his travels. A space where, in his eyes, major contemporary challenges such as interreligious dialogue or the reception of migrants are at stake. However, unlike his visit to Marseille, where the program already said a lot about his choice to address the theme of migration, in Ajaccio, nothing yet indicates in which direction his speech will go.
Red carpet
In any case, the Pope is eagerly awaited on site. In the streets of the imperial city, deserted by cars due to massive parking bans, there is excitement a few hours before the arrival of the sovereign pontiff on Sunday, the first visit by a pope to this Mediterranean island of 350 000 inhabitants. The port city is adorned, little by little, with yellow and white, the papal colors, sometimes associated with the bandera, the Corsican flag, composed of a Moor’s head on a white background. On the facade of a hotel, a huge red fabric cross, four stories high, was installed.
On the security side, some 2,200 reinforcements of police, gendarmes and other CRS and civil security soldiers, who are added to the thousand members of the police present permanently on the Isle of Beauty, have arrived, s Jérôme Filippini, the prefect of Corsica, is congratulated.
A device that is not surprising given the scale of the event, but what is more surprising to François Mabille, researcher at the CNRS, is that the organization of this stay which completely escaped the hierarchy of the French church. The latter even learned it late. Everything was done, according to the Vatican specialist, thanks to the special bond that the pope maintains with the bishop of Ajaccio, François Bustillo, whom he chose to make cardinal last year. Sometimes presented as a potential pope, the very popular bishop of Ajaccio, Mgr François-Xavier Bustillo, stands out with his media exposure which, moreover, annoys some in Rome.