A prayer for those lost at sea, both sailors and migrants, in front of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde. A speech to 70 bishops and 120 young people aged 20 to 35 from all over the Mediterranean. And a mass for over 50,000 pilgrims in the Velodrome Stadium. The symbolic moments that will happen during the pope's visit to Marseille on September 22 and 23 are already well established.

In the torpor of August, pressure is mounting for those preparing Pope Francis' visit, his first to France since 2014, when he addressed the European institutions in Strasbourg. "We've only had six months to wrap things up since the confirmation of the visit, but a lot of people are on this journey with us. It's an once-in-a-lifetime experience," enthused laywoman Anne Giraud, head of Secours Catholique in Marseille and a member of the episcopal council.

"It's extraordinary in the literal sense of the word. The previous pontifical visit dates back to 1533. We can't yet measure the scale of what will be a planetary event the likes of which our town has rarely seen," said an impatient Benoît Payan, the town's left-wing mayor. He expects "over a hundred thousand visitors," and is already imagining "opening up the city's parks to allow those without accommodation to sleep in safe places."

To support the invitation extended to the Pope by the Archbishop of Marseille Jean-Marc Aveline (who was made cardinal at the end of August 2022), Payan sent a handwritten letter in the winter of 2022. The following summer, he spoke to the Pope, in Italian. "I had nothing to do with the decision," he said. "I just tried to talk about my city as I see it and to tell him that he was welcome here."

Francis is not coming "to France," but "to Marseille." He has repeated this over and over again, hammering it home on Friday, August 4, in an interview with the Spanish press, and again three days later on the plane returning from the World Youth Day in Lisbon. The phrase has been misunderstood on a few occasions. With a view to highlighting the marginalized, the Pope tends to reserve his official visits for smaller countries, grappling with a complicated internal reality or geopolitical context. This applies to Mongolia, where he is due to visit in early September, and to the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, which he visited in February.

But Francis is making an exception for Marseille, a city he sees as a symbol of "generous openness," as Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State, explained when he scouted the city in June 2022.

You have 62.35% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.