President Nicolas Sarkozy was accused on Friday of transgressing France’s secular constitution after rolling out the red carpet for the Pope and calling for greater acceptance of religion.As he welcomed Benedict XVI to France at the beginning of a four-day visit, Mr Sarkozy said: “Rejecting a dialogue with religion would be a cultural and intellectual error”.
He also set out his concept of a “positive secularism that debates, respects and includes, not a secularism that rejects”.
France has been a staunchly secular state since an anti-clerical government passed a law in 1905 disestablishing the Roman Catholic church and banning the use of public money for religious purposes.
“Secularism implies that religion is a private matter, in a state that respects freedom to worship,” said Julien Dray, a Socialist party spokesman. “Those responsible for governing the republic, above all the president, must act as guardians of these principles.”
In recent years, it is members of France’s 5m strong community of Muslims rather than its dwindling population of church-going Catholics who have brought into question the strict separation of religion and the state, as in the dispute over a ban on headscarves in schools.
Now it is the president who has broken political taboos by suggesting that religion should play a bigger role in the public sphere.
In December last year he enraged secularists when he said schoolteachers could not fully replace parish priests for instilling moral values and eternal truths. The primary schoolteacher was traditionally regarded as the bulwark against the power of the church.
Even his decision to greet the pontiff in person at the airport on Friday has raised eyebrows.
Son of a Hungarian immigrant and with Jewish ancestry, Mr Sarkozy often describes himself as a non-practising Catholic, a declaration his predecessors would not have made, even though they may have been more devout than this two-times divorcee.
Although Mr Sarkozy’s stance may help solidify his support among traditional Catholic centre-right voters, it also stems from a long-standing curiosity about the role of religion in modern political life.
“Positive secularism” in practice meant “the search for meaning and the respect for beliefs”, he said on Friday.
The president’s views were echoed by the Pope, prompting criticism from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a leftwing senator and staunch secularist.
The French appear largely indifferent to the Pope’s visit. An Opinionway survey published on Friday found 62 per cent regarded it as a matter of importance for Catholics rather than for the French as a whole.
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(Source: FT)