The pope will visit Corsica Dec. 15 after skipping Paris reopening of Notre-Dame

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ROME (AP) — Pope Francis will travel to the Mediterranean island of Corsica on Dec. 15, making yet another visit to France that avoids the capital and all the pomp and protocol that accompanies a proper state visit.

The one-day visit to the French island region, confirmed Saturday by the Vatican, is to close out a diocesan conference on popular piety in Ajaccio, the capital.

While Francis will meet with President Emmanuel Macron at the airport before returning to Rome, the trip is in some way a snub of the French leader who had invited Francis to travel to Paris the previous weekend to preside over the grand reopening of Notre-Dame.

Francis made clear in September that he wouldn’t participate in the ceremony, telling reporters flat-out “I won’t go to Paris,” after a French publication reported that he would attend the Dec. 8 reopening of the cathedral after the devastating 2019 fire.

Francis subsequently announced a busy Vatican agenda for that weekend, presiding over a consistory to create new cardinals Dec. 7 and participating in his annual commemoration of the Dec. 8 feast day dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

The Dec. 15 event in Corsica seems far more suited to Francis’ priorities than a grand cathedral reopening, emphasizing the “church of the peripheries.” He will close out a Corsican church conference on “popular piety in the Mediterranean.”

It’s a similar theme that brought Francis to the southern French port of Marseille in 2023, when he made an overnight visit to participate in an annual summit of Mediterranean bishops. His previous trip to France was at the start of his pontificate, when he made a one-day visit to Strasbourg on Nov. 25, 2014, to address the European Parliament and Council of Europe.

Corsica is home to more than 340,000 people and has been part of France since 1768. But the island has also seen pro-independence violence and has an influential nationalist movement, and last year Macron proposed granting it limited autonomy.

Francis has stressed that he wants to prioritize smaller Catholic communities on the peripheries rather than the big centers of Christianity. As a result, his foreign trips have tended to avoid major European capitals in favor of far-flung churches in poorer parts of the world.

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