Leone to France: urgent dialogue needed to prevent a slide towards authoritarianism
Message from the President of the Republic to Pope Leo XIV ahead of the Pontiff’s visit to France
Key points
- Pope: humanitarian crisis in Ceuta calls for action
- Macron’s welcome
- Enter the key point]
- Macron to the Pope: organisation is needed to prevent AI from being concentrated in the hands of a few
- Leone to France: urgent dialogue needed to prevent a drift towards authoritarianism
- The Pope: the arms race is the wrong solution
- Two minutes’ applause for Leone’s speech at the Élysée Palace, a standing ovation
- Mattarella’s message
The Pope is in Paris. His four-day apostolic journey to France, which will also take him to Lourdes and Metz, has begun in the capital. Leone was welcomed by President Macron and his wife Brigitte at the Élysée Palace. Following lunch at the Apostolic Nunciature, he visited UNESCO and celebrated Vespers at Notre-Dame Cathedral. Leone will be the first Pope to see the cathedral restored following the 2019 fire. The Pope will conclude the day at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis for a prayer vigil with 80,000 young people, which will begin at 9 pm. When asked by the CNN Vatican correspondent, during the flight, for a comment on the exclusion of some journalists from the White House, Prevost replied: “I’m glad you’re all here.”
Pope: humanitarian crisis in Ceuta calls for action
The crisis in Ceuta ‘is a crisis with various underlying causes. We need to understand how to respond in order to prevent this sort of emergency. It was truly a humanitarian crisis.” The Pope said this – according to Vatican News – whilst speaking to Spanish journalists on the flight that took him from Rome to France. The Pope assured them that he had been following the humanitarian crisis “from day one”.
Macron’s welcome
“‘Welcome to France, Most Holy Father’: so wrote the French President, Emmanuel Macron, in a message posted on X, to which he attached a short video of himself and his wife Brigitte welcoming Pope Leo XIV on the tarmac at Orly Airport, south of Paris, under a glorious September sun. Pope Leo’s visit marks the first apostolic journey by a Pope to France in 18 years. After Paris, the Pope is also scheduled to visit Lourdes and Metz.
Macron to the Pope: we need organisation to prevent AI from being concentrated in the hands of a few
Speaking alongside the Pope in the Élysée Palace hall, the French President, Emmanuel Macron, called for an ‘international organisation’ to prevent artificial intelligence from being concentrated ‘in the hands of a few’. Recalling that Leo XIV had dedicated his first encyclical precisely to AI, Macron added that ‘this message is essential: in the face of the power of digital technology, human beings must retain their place. Artificial intelligence must be a servant, not a master. That is why we must find a way to establish an international organisation capable of reconciling technological progress, justice and humanism”.
Leone to France: urgent dialogue needed to prevent a slide towards authoritarianism
For his part, the Pope emphasises the importance of dialogue in an increasingly multicultural society. ‘Those who live in this country,’ said Leone, ‘together form a people in which the diversity of their origins helps to enliven and enrich social coexistence and democratic life.’ ‘A truly free society does not impose uniformity, but protects the diversity of consciences, preventing authoritarian tendencies and promoting dialogue’, which ‘is all the more urgent in the context of today’s France, where people of different cultural and religious backgrounds are called upon to live together and make their own contribution to the building of society’.
