Pope Francis (C) presides over a mass at Place dAusterlitz (U Casone) with a commemorative monument statue of Napoleon the 1st in the background in Ajaccio, as part of his trip on the French island of Corsica, on December 15, 2024. Agence France-Presse
AJACCIO, France — Pope Francis completed a one-day trip to Corsica Sunday marked by cheering crowds and good humor in the French Mediterranean island, a stronghold of the Catholic faith.
Around 9,000 turned out to attend as he celebrated mass, with as many again watching on giant screens, said local officials, in what was the first-ever trip by a pontiff to the French Mediterranean island.
The ceremony was the high point of a visit during which Francis spoke out on issues such as France’s state secularism and the crisis in the Middle East.
READ: Pope to focus on regional ‘crisis, conflict’ during visit to Corsica
“Everything is mixed together, solemnity, sincerity, emotions,” said Fabienne Mazza, one of 300 singers who took part in the mass. “His being here makes managing to control our emotions stressful.”
Francis had arrived in the papal plane on Sunday morning.
He moved through the packed streets of Ajaccio in his popemobile, blessing children, a 108-year-old woman and even a pizza held out by an enterprising restaurant owner.
From the crowd, worshippers cried out “evivva u papa” (“long live the pope” in the Corsican language.
READ: Pope Francis to skip Notre Dame opening in Paris for Corsica visit
Francis appeared in good spirits, with a ready smile throughout the day’s events, despite a bruise still visible on his face from a fall a few days ago.
‘A magical moment’
Local authorities said around 12,000 people had turned out to greet the pope on the streets.
“This is exceptional, I’m moved, it’s a magical moment, a one-off chance,” said Solene Pianacci, a 44-year-old school head, at one of Francis’ earlier stops at the cathedral in the Corsican capital Ajaccio.
The 87-year-old pontiff’s first stop was to make the closing remarks at a congress on religion in the Mediterranean.
There, he called for “a concept of secularity that is not static and fixed, but evolving and dynamic”, touching on a sensitive topic for France.
Strict state secularism was originally introduced to curb the influence of the Church on public life, but is now more commonly deployed against symbols of Islam such as the Muslim headscarf or hijab.
Francis later called for peace “throughout the Middle East” but also for “the Ukranian people and the Russian people”.
He also offered prayers for the cyclone-hit French Indian Ocean territory Mayotte, where one senior official said the death toll would be in the hundreds, possibly even higher.
Macron meeting
Ajaccio was decked out in decorations in the papal colours, yellow and white, while cars had been banished from central streets with parking bans. Around 2,000 police reinforcements were sent there to beef up security.
Francis’s short trip comes just a week after he skipped the re-opening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris five years after a devastating fire — attended by world leaders including Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky.
But he agreed to the Corsica trip hosted by the island’s popular, media-savvy cardinal, 56-year-old Francois-Xavier Bustillo.
Wearing a pink robe traditional for the third Sunday of Advent, Francis thanked Bustillo during mass for “this whole day when (he had) felt as if I was at home”.
The cardinal responded that the visit had been a “true blessing for Corsica”, where the local Church says around 90 percent of the 350,000 residents are Catholic.
Francis’ final appointment after mass was a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron at the airport ahead of his departure.
Macron presented the pope with a book detailing the restoration of Notre-Dame, news channel BFM reported. Francis flew out of Ajaccio after his 40-minute meeting with the French president.
Sunday marked Francis’s third visit to France as pope, after eastern city Strasbourg in 2014 and Mediterranean port Marseille last year — although none has been an official state visit to the country.
Some have seen that as a sign of his disapproval of French policy changes away from Church doctrine during his papacy, including on gay marriage and an ongoing public debate about assisted dying.
His defenders highlight that the pontiff, concerned with the world’s marginalized people, largely shuns capital cities and sumptuous receptions.
No to ‘divisions’
The Corsica visit was his 47th overseas trip since his 2013 election and the third in 2024. Several have been around the Mediterranean, from the Greek island of Lesbos to Malta and Sicily.
But this is the first visit by a pope to Corsica, a French region with a distinctive identity and a fierce independence movement.
In his Sunday morning remarks, Francis warned against religious feeling being “exploited by groups that seek self-aggrandizement by fueling polemics, narrow-mindedness, divisions and exclusivist attitudes”.
The message comes as a new far-right Corsican nationalist movement, Mossa Palatina, campaigns to “reaffirm the primacy of Catholicism” and ensure that “Corsica never becomes another Lampedusa” — the Italian island where many migrants hoping to reach Europe have landed.
The pope himself has long advocated for welcoming migrants.