French President Emmanuel Macron is in Rome on Sunday for the start of a three-day peace summit hosted by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Catholic charity known for its efforts to promote interfaith dialogue, notably in Africa. He will also meet with Pope Francis on Monday.
Macron is set to deliver a speech at the opening of the annual event in Rome alongside the presidents of Italy and Niger.
The gathering, also attended by France’s chief rabbi Haïm Korsia, will mark the latest in a series of meetings between Macron and leaders of the Catholic charity.
Nicknamed "the little UN of Trastevere" (from the name of the district of Rome where it is based), Sant'Egidio, was founded in 1968 by young Catholic students and has become over the years the informal diplomatic arm of the Vatican.
In 1992, Sant'Egidio oversaw the signing of a peace agreement in Mozambique which put an end to 16 years of civil war between power and the rebellion. Similar diplomatic actions have been undertaken in Guinea, Niger, Central African Republic, Chad, and South Sudan.
Very involved in welcoming refugees, one of the pillars of Francis' pontificate, since 2015 Sant'Egidio has been organising "humanitarian corridors" bringing refugees from Syria, the Horn of Africa and Greece, an initiative rewarded in 2019 with an award from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Multilateralism
Announcing the event’s programme earlier this month, Marco Impagliazzo, the head of Sant’Egidio, praised Macron’s views on European cooperation and relations with Africa. He also defended the French president’s decision to maintain a dialogue with Moscow amid the war in Ukraine.
According to the Elysée, Macron's address will be along the lines of the one given to the UN General Assembly in September, when he denounced "a return to the age of imperialism and colonies" imposed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Macron is keen to emphasise multilateralism as a way to face the "crises that run through our planet" - be it climate, inequalities and war - as well as "on the importance of avoiding the creation of artificial fractures" between the North and the South, explained the president's office.
This three-day interreligious summit entitled "The Cry of Peace" will end on Tuesday in the presence of the Pope.
Pope Francis will host Macron at the Vatican on Monday morning, for the third time since he became president, the previous one dating back to less than a year ago, in November 2021.
New guard
Macron will also meet with the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella on Monday during a private lunch.
It has not yet been announced whether Macron will meet with Italy's new Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni who was sworn in on Saturday as the country's first female leader after her far right-wing party won elections in September.
Odon Vallet, a historian of religion told France 24 television that Macron is wary of being too openly welcoming to Italy's new leadership which hails from the far right political wing.
"It's a delicate balancing act for Macron's second and last mandate," Vallet explains, adding Macron is keen to ensure his own country does not slide into the hands of the far right.
"A quarter of France’s Catholic voters, many of them practising, voted for Marine Le Pen at the recent presidential election – a percentage equal to that of the wider public. It’s a major problem for Macron, because it means there is a genuine risk that church leaders might one day cease to oppose the far right with the steadfastness that has characterised Pope Francis, for instance".
French Catholics, he says – and indeed the wider public – are also deeply divided on a number of sensitive issues, including plans to legislate on abortion rights and euthanasia.
"Macron needs to rekindle the flame with Catholic voters, which has faded after the euphoria that greeted his first months in office," the professor says.
