"Help yourself, it's on the house," said François-Xavier Bustillo, radiant, with an inimitable mingled accent that marks his Spanish birth, the Italian education of his Franciscan youth and, for the last 30 years, his French religious life. What a lovely evening it was on August 29, in the mild summer sunshine of Ajaccio. The cardinal's coat of arms – the blazon of his Basque-Navarran family combined with a Moor's head, a symbol of Corsica – was stretched out from the second floor of the newly restored bishop's palace. A copious buffet of local specialties was laid out in the courtyard for the hundred or so friends invited to celebrate the 55-year-old prelate's Legion of Honor. There has been a fascinating "Bustillomania" in Corsica even before his latest claim to fame: attracting the pope to the French island.

For this ceremony, the cardinal wanted to do things on a grand scale. He drew up the guest list himself, "personal for a personal evening," few priests and vicars but all the figures of power on the island. This included future minister Catherine Vautrin, now in charge of Corsican affairs in the Barnier government; the Corsican prefect, since appointed prefect of Brittany; the new rector, the region's top education official; gendarmes; lawyers; business leaders; and of course the island's elected representatives, now mostly nationalist. "Just reading the names and their titles before my speech took me five minutes," joked chef Mathieu Pacaud.

It was he who, "on behalf of the president of the French republic," presented the cardinal with his honor. The young chef and the man of the cloth met at Le Laurent, the Michelin-starred, upmarket Parisian restaurant where Pacaud works and meets the entire French political world. "We talk on the phone a lot, and he's become like my shrink," said Pacaud. "Rarely has anyone made as much of an impression on me as he has, with the possible exception of [actor, screenwriter and director] Guillaume Gallienne 20 years ago. What strikes me is that he's never judgmental."

'What is there to bless?'

On August 29, the top judge of the Bastia Court of Appeal, Hélène Davo, was absent. Lucky for her. For in the small assembly was a man convicted several times before Corsican courts: Paul Canarelli, the boss of the sublime hotel estate of Murtoli, a resort of luxury sheepfolds set between Bonifacio and Sartène where ministers, celebrities and thugs on the run like to hide out. In a few months, he will be summoned to appear before the Bastia court, where another major case involving Murtoli is being tried. In the courtyard of the bishop's palace, the businessman rubbed shoulders with the gendarmerie's General Jean-Luc Villeminey, whose men are in charge of the Murtoli investigations. But how could anyone imagine that Canarelli was "sponsoring" these parties?

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