Pope Francis will visit the French Mediterranean island of Corsica on December 15, just days after skipping the reopening of Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral which was ravaged by a fire in 2019, the Vatican said Saturday. French President Emmanuel Macron had invited the 87-year-old pontiff to attend the Notre Dame reopening ceremony in Paris on December 7. But Francis declined and instead will head to Ajaccio, the capital of Corsica, for a conference on the Catholic faith in the Mediterranean, the Vatican said.
“The star of the Notre Dame reopening ceremony is Notre Dame itself,” the head of the Bishops’ Conference of France (CEF) Eric de Moulins-Beaufort said. The pope had not wanted his presence to be a distraction from the essential point of the occasion, he added. Instead the pope will travel to Corsica, the fourth largest island in the Mediterranean.
It will be the first ever papal visit to the island, where 90 percent of its 350,000 population is Catholic, according to the local Church, and religious traditions such as processions remain deeply rooted. He will deliver two addresses and preside over a mass in the afternoon before meeting Macron, the Vatican said. The pontiff will arrive in Ajaccio at 9:00 am (0800 GMT) and leave shortly after 6:00 pm.
Francis, who will celebrate his 88th birthday on December 17, has been to France twice since becoming head of the worldwide Catholic Church in 2013. He visited Strasbourg in 2014, where he addressed the European Parliam.