“I consider that it is my place to go there. I will not go as a Catholic, I will go as President of the Republic,” he said during a trip to Semur-en- Auxois, in Côte-d’Or.
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He responds to the controversy. President Emmanuel Macron defended, Friday September 15, his decision to attend the mass that Pope Francis will give on Saturday September 23 in Marseille, affirming that he would go as “president” of a secular country, but not as a “Catholic”.
“I consider it my place to go. I will not go as a Catholic, I will go as President of the Republic – which is, in fact, secular”he said during a trip to Semur-en-Auxois, in Côte-d’Or. “I myself will not have religious practice during this mass”he added.
A first for a French president since 1980
Faced with criticism from the left, who believes in the name of secularism that he should not attend this giant religious service, in front of tens of thousands of people, Emmanuel Macron recalled that the pope had the rank of head of state , and that its presence did not call into question the neutrality of the State.
The presence at a papal mass is a first for a French head of state since that celebrated in 1980 by John Paul II on the square in front of Notre-Dame in the presence of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. In June 2017, shortly after his first election, Emmanuel Macron participated in the annual iftar (fast-breaking dinner) of the French Council of Muslim Worship, the representative body of France’s second religion.