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Meeting with Pope puts Macron’s religious views in spotlight

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to meet with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Tuesday. But what's the leader's history with the Catholic church so far?

Meeting with Pope puts Macron's religious views in spotlight
Macron with his wife Brigitte at the Cathedral of Aachen. Photo: AFP
As a schoolboy, Emmanuel Macron decided he wanted to be baptised as a Catholic, despite his parents' misgivings.
 
It was “the start of a mystical period that lasted for a few years,” the French president told an interviewer during campaigning in 2017.
   
By his mid-teens, he had distanced himself from the church, however, and he now considers himself to be agnostic.
 
Asked last year whether he believed in God, he gave a cryptic answer that pointed to his faith in something spiritual and immaterial, but not Catholic in form.
   
“I believe in a form of transcendence, that's why I thoroughly respect the role of religions in society,” he said during a chat with journalists.
   
Faith and the highly sensitive subject of the role of the church in French society are set to be on the menu Tuesday when Macron visits the Vatican for 
the first time as leader for a meeting with Pope Francis.
 
The Cathedral of Aachen in Germany the day Macron was awarded the Charlemagne prize. Photo: AFP
   
The 40-year-old centrist has decided to accept being made an honorary canon of St John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, a tradition dating back to the 15th 
century when the French state and church were indistinguishable. 
   
Several of Macron's predecessors have declined the title, including Socialists Francois Mitterrand and Francois Hollande, in a bid to avoid associating themselves with religious imagery.
 
'Little priest'
 
France is strictly secular under a landmark 1905 law that separated the state from the church.
   
It remains one of the country's most debated rules and was invoked controversially in 2004 to ban religious symbols, including the Islamic headscarf, from schools.
   
Macron's decision to accept the honorary canon title has drawn particular scrutiny at home following comments in April in which he said he wanted to “repair” the “bond” between church and state.
   
One of his leftist opponents, Jean-Luc Melenchon, led criticism of the remarks, saying: “One expects a president, one gets a little priest.”
   
Macron's enthusiasm for the church appears to stem in part from his belief that religious leaders have a role to play in helping French society overcome a fractious period riven by economic, ethnic and social tensions.
   
It might also be an electoral calculation: Catholicism is still France's biggest religion and many believers worry that France is moving too far from its traditional Christian roots.
 
“At a time of great social fragility… I consider it my responsibility to stop the erosion of confidence among Catholics with regard to politics and politicians,” Macron told church leaders in April.
 
French President Emmanuel Macron, delivers a speech during a meeting of the Bishops' Conference of France. Photo: AFP
 
Past tensions 
 
His meeting with Pope Francis will also be an opportunity to soothe diplomatic tensions with the Vatican which emerged under the 2012-2017 presidency of Hollande, a self-described atheist.  
   
The church campaigned against a gay marriage law passed by Hollande and then declined to accept an openly gay career diplomat as France's ambassador 
to the Holy See.
   
Aides to Macron believe the current president and pope share a common vision of a united Europe at a time when anti-EU far-right parties are on the march across the continent.
   
The Argentine pontiff sent a congratulatory telegram to Macron, a former investment banker, after his election in May last year which urged him to build a “fairer and more fraternal society”. 
   
But they hold different views on the sensitive topic of migration, with Macron repeatedly stating that France “cannot welcome all of the world's misery” and insisting that economic migrants should be expelled.
   
Pope Francis insists in his sermons that rich countries must do more to welcome the poor and desperate.
   
“I don't think the pope will offer platitudes on the issue of migrants,” Matthieu Rouge, a well-connected bishop in the town of Nanterre west of Paris, 
told AFP.
   
Another potential area of disagreement is Macron's backing for fertility treatment to be extended to all women, including gay couples and women not in 
relationships.
   
The move is opposed by Catholic groups in France, which see it as undermining traditional family values because it will lead to children growing up without fathers.
   
Macron is expected to invite Pope Francis to visit France, as Hollande did in vain, but the pontiff is not expected to make the trip a priority in the short-term.
 
By AFP's Adam PLOWRIGHT

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RELIGION

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

The Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious educational institution, Al-Azhar in Egypt, has called for the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products after far-right activists destroyed Korans in those countries.

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

Al-Azhar, in a statement issued on Wednesday, called on “Muslims to boycott Dutch and Swedish products”.

It also urged “an appropriate response from the governments of these two countries” which it charged were “protecting despicable and barbaric crimes in the name of ‘freedom of expression'”.

Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan on Saturday set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in front of Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm, raising tensions as Sweden courts Ankara over its bid to join Nato.

EXPLAINED:

The following day, Edwin Wagensveld, who heads the Dutch chapter of the German anti-Islam group Pegida, tore pages out of the Koran during a one-man protest outside parliament.

Images on social media also showed him walking on the torn pages of the holy book.

The desecration of the Koran sparked strong protests from Ankara and furious demonstrations in several capitals of the Muslim world including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the Koran burning, expressing “deep concern at the recurrence of such events and the recent Islamophobic escalation in a certain number of European countries”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful”, while the United States called it “repugnant”.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Turkey and Sweden”.

On Tuesday, Turkey postponed Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Stockholm for allowing weekend protests that included the burning of the Koran.

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