THE Roman Catholic Church in France has cautiously welcomed the election of President Emmanuel Macron for a second five-year term, while echoing calls for action to tackle growing division and discontent in the country.
“There’s no doubt that the French have made a reasoned choice, as can be seen in how the votes were transferred,” the Archbishop of Reims and President of the Conference of Bishops, the Most Revd Éric de Moulins-Beaufort, said.
“But this election also reveals an increasing rupture in France, which is geographical, but also separates those above from those below, and is worrying for our country’s future. What’s clearly needed now is a collective project which can truly bring people together by transcending social classes, religious affiliations, and other divisions.”
The Archbishop was reacting to President Macron’s victory on Sunday over his challenger Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-Right Rassemblement National party.
President Macron captured 58.55 per cent of the votes against Ms Le Pen’s 41.45 per cent, becoming the first French head of state to be re-elected in two decades.
In a Vatican News interview, the Archbishop said that the result would “reassure” the European Union, but it also served as a reminder that the EU needed to “reinvent itself” and “prove more convincing”, especially for those who, rightly or wrongly, felt excluded from the benefits of globalisation.
“It seems to me that we’re seeing the limits today of the development model which has accompanied us since the Second World War,” Archbishop de Moulins-Beaufort said. “We’re seeing it in terms of the redistribution of wealth, and the ecological and social crisis — by all accounts, we’re feeling the limitations of one system, while struggling to imagine another.”
At a late-night rally in Paris, President Macron, who is 44, promised supporters that he would now act as “President for all”, and find answers to the “anger and disagreement” that had boosted support for the far Right.
The 72-per-cent turnout, however, was the lowest in France for more than half a century, and was marked by widespread spoiled and blank ballot papers. Support for Ms Le Pen, whose platform included fiscal help for the poor and a referendum on immigration, was substantially above her record in previous elections.
The President’s centre-Right party La République En Marche, which won an absolute majority in 2017, is widely expected to lose support in the June elections for France’s 577-seat National Assembly. If this happens, it will necessitate a coalition with other parties.
Referring to exit polls, the RC daily La Croix said that 40 per cent of Catholics had backed far-Right candidates in the first-round vote — above the national average — but estimated that 55 per cent had supported President Macron in Sunday’s run-off.
The news agency Reforme.Net reported on Monday that 65 per cent of French Protestants had voted for President Macron, and that just 17 per cent had favoured Ms Le Pen.
The Fédération Protestante de France (FPF), the membership of whose 30 Churches and unions of Churches makes up about three per cent of the country’s population of 68 million, had organised lectures on ten main issues in the election run-up, including laïcité (the secularism of French public life), poverty, racism, and sexual equality.
In a mid-April statement, it urged voters not to abstain in the second-round ballot, warning that a victory for Ms Le Pen would hamper Christian commitments to religious freedom, acceptance of foreigners, climate advocacy, and social fraternity.
Meanwhile, the President of the FPF, François Clavairoly, assured Le Monde that spirituality retained “its place in a secular republic”, and said that Protestants, though few in number, could “breathe the words of fraternity against the discourse of extremes” and “spur those in power to avoid democratic bankruptcy”.
Church leaders criticised government-backed laws in 2021 liberalising abortion and embryo research, and imposing curbs on religious associations in the wake of Islamist violence.
Another Bill, which would have made the country the sixth in Europe to allow euthanasia and assisted dying, was voted down a year ago, but is to be retabled this year.
Election day was marred by a knife attack on a priest and an elderly nun at Saint-Pierre-d’Arène, Nice, shortly after the start of the main mass. In a communiqué, the diocese of Nice said that the lives of the pair were no longer in danger, and thanked security officials for their prompt “support and presence”.