French President Emmanuel Macron will meet Pope Leo XIV for the first time during a visit to the Vatican on Friday, with both sides condemning the war with Iran.
The French president is due to arrive in Rome on Thursday for a visit that will focus solely on a meeting with the pope and has no plans to meet Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, the far-right leader who has at times clashed with Macron.
On Thursday evening, Macron planned to meet with his friend Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Catholic community of Sant’Egidio, the Holy See’s informal diplomatic channel active in peace efforts and humanitarian issues.
Macron will meet the Chicago-born, French-speaking pope at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Friday morning in what the Elysee Palace calls a “republican secular visit.”
The leaders will discuss a wide range of topics, from international affairs and the regulation of artificial intelligence – a topic close to the pope’s heart – to climate change and humanitarian issues, the statement said.
This will be the fourth time that France’s center-right leader has received the pope, after Leo’s predecessor Francis received the pope three times in 2018, 2021 and 2022.
Macron and Leo spoke by phone last May, shortly after the former Robert Francis Prevost was elected leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.
Macron then told the new pope that he shared “the ambition to reconcile the eradication of poverty and the protection of the planet.”
An upcoming meeting with the wary and cautious Leo may require a change of style from the experienced French leader, who has a close and direct relationship with Argentinian Francis, with whom he has even spoken informally.
-“Intellectual Exchange”-
Vatican expert Marco Politi told AFP the meeting was not just a diplomatic meeting but a “personal exchange of knowledge”.
He said that with the Trump presidency and the war with Iran, the current geopolitical environment is full of “cruelty and chaos” and that Macron and Leo represent leaders who want to “rebuild a rules-based international community.”
Leo has become more outspoken in his opposition to U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy in recent weeks, calling his threats to wipe out Iranian civilization ahead of this week’s ceasefire agreement “unacceptable.”
Macron, meanwhile, has expressed anger at Trump, who recently made derisive comments about the French leader’s marriage.
Macron may also use Friday’s meeting to call for the release of French journalist Christophe Gleizes, who has been imprisoned in Algeria since June, where Leo is due to fly to Algeria on Monday on a papal plane, according to news reports.
– Visiting France? –
Macron’s delegation includes the former head of France’s church commission on sexual abuse. The commission was never officially received by Pope Francis, despite its 2021 report revealing systemic scale of abuse within the institution.
In the current debate in France, the issue of euthanasia and euthanasia is also likely to come up during the meeting between Macron and Leo. The Vatican considers euthanasia a “crime against human life” and assisted dying a “grave crime” and those who take such measures are prohibited from receiving the sacraments.
Macron is expected to formally invite the pope to visit France, a diplomatic source told AFP.
Although Francis has visited Strasbourg, Marseille and Ajaccio in Corsica three times, he has never made a state visit to France and refused to attend the reopening of Notre Dame in 2024.
cmk/ams/ar/st
This article was generated from automated news agency feeds without modifications to the text.
