On Tuesday, just a day after the death of Pope Francis, French President Emmanuel Macron said he will be cancelling his trip to Mauritius to attend the pontiff's funeral in the Vatican on Saturday.
But Franco-Vatican relations have been anything but straightforward, marked by moments of warmth but also riddled with tensions.
The relationship between the Jesuit pope and the French president, the latter of whom was educated in a Jesuit school, was cordial and sometimes even warm.
In 2018, during one of their meetings in the Vatican, Macron greeted the pontiff by kissing his cheek. Both men were on first-name terms.
However, the Pope disagreed on several of Macron's positions, such as France’s move to enshrine abortion rights in its constitution last year, and its evolving debate on assisted dying — topics where Pope Francis and the French government diverged.
Although often accused of being cold towards France, Pope Francis visited the country three times — more than any other during his 12-year pontificate.
However, each visit was marred by misunderstandings, leading many to question the relationship between the Pope and France.
“I’ll go to Marseille, not France”
Francis’ first visit to France in 2014 was, officially, a European one.
He travelled to Strasbourg to address the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. But he did not visit the city’s famed cathedral—a detail that sparked criticism at the time.
In 2023, Pope Francis travelled to the southern city of Marseille to denounce the tragedy of migrant shipwrecks in the Mediterranean.
But it was one comment before the visit that grabbed headlines.
“I’ll go to Marseille, not France," he said—prompting speculation about whether he was deliberately distancing himself from the French government.
Francis drew a crowd of 60,000 at the city’s Velodrome stadium, where he celebrated mass and made an impassioned plea for greater compassion toward migrants—a subtle dig at Macron's tougher stance on immigration.
“There were a number of very frank exchanges between the two heads of state”, but “each was in his own role," said the French Foreign Minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, during an interview on French radio Franceinfo on Tuesday.
A Final Visit—and a Missed Invitation
The most symbolic rupture came in December 2024. Pope Francis did not attend the grand reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, five years after it was ravaged by fire.
Yet, one week later, the Pope travelled to Corsica, which would turn out to be his final trip abroad.
For some, the choice felt like a snub. But Martin Dumont, a historian and expert on Catholicism, argued that it reflected the Pope’s unwavering commitment to reaching what he called the “peripheries” of the Catholic world.
“He preferred to go on pastoral visits,” Dumont explained. “He really wanted to get in touch with the faithful directly… He didn't want to make state visits, which would have entailed a lot of pomp and protocol," he told Euronews.
The head of the Catholic Church has never made any secret of the fact that Europe was not his priority.
Throughout his papacy, Francis avoided official visits to other major Catholic nations such as Germany, Spain, and the UK.
Instead, he chose destinations such as Asia, Africa, and smaller, poorer countries and those at war.
