The Pope Turned Down the Photo Op, Then He Spoke

Emmanuel Macron wanted a state visit, complete with the Republican Guard, the Legion of Honor, and a few minutes alone with the pope inside Notre-Dame. What he got was an apostolic journey, a pope who stayed at the nunciature and, in the president’s own reception hall, the kind of political lesson a French president rarely receives. Not once did the pope raise his voice.

The Stage Set That Never Went Up

Start with what didn’t happen, because that is where the whole story lies. The Élysée had planned the full production: a military welcome, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, a state dinner, and above all that dream moment, a few minutes with the pope inside Notre-Dame so the president could show him “his” restoration. Rome declined, politely, one item at a time.

Leo XIV slept and took his meals at the apostolic nunciature. He had not come to celebrate Macron’s France; he had come to see the Catholics of France. The Élysée dismissed the whole affair as a “pointless controversy,” and eventually conceded that the meeting with the craftsmen who rebuilt Notre-Dame would not take place, citing “scheduling reasons.” A snub in protocol, nothing more. But nothing less.

Back in 2024, I wrote that Notre-Dame was a triumph of labor and faith. The Vatican has just reminded everyone of the proper order of things: the cathedral is a place of worship before it is a backdrop for a presidency in its final stretch.

Courtesy as a Weapon

Then came the speech. This is where hasty commentators get it wrong: they go looking for an insult, and there isn’t one. The pope thanks the president for Notre-Dame, pays tribute to the craftsmen, and invokes the Enlightenment and René Cassin. Every line is impeccable.

But beneath the courtesy, each paragraph takes apart another piece of Macronism. And he does it to the president’s face, in the president’s house, before the assembled diplomatic corps. No one talks back to a pope. You listen, and you smile for the camera, for the one photo you ended up getting.

Bernanos Versus “Plug, Baby, Plug”

In February 2025, Emmanuel Macron hosted the world at his AI summit, announced €109 billion in investment, and summed up his vision with a slogan worthy of an influencer: “Plug, baby, plug.” France was to become Europe’s data center farm, with Mistral AI as the national champion and the state as its biggest customer.

Eighteen months later, in the same palace, the pope answered him with a French writer. Tucked into a footnote is a single reference: Bernanos, La France contre les robots (France Against the Robots), 1946. The pope recalls that French civilization spent centuries forming free, responsible men precisely so as not to end up in the “Paradise of Machines.” And then:

“If we are to avoid losing our humanity amid a ‘paradise of machines’ invading and conditioning our daily lives, there is an urgent need for education in ethical discernment.”

The president of the “start-up nation” had to be reminded of France’s own heritage by an American. It took nerve. The pope had it.

That same day, at UNESCO, he drove the point home:

“Our efforts in this domain must ensure that new technologies remain at the service of the human person, rather than becoming yet another instrument of domination and injustice.”

I have been saying it for months on this blog, from the AI Act to the question of who answers for AI agents: the real question about AI is not how many gigawatts we plug in, but who decides, and whom it serves. The pope put it in a single sentence. Our leaders have not managed it in an entire term.

The List of Grievances, Read Aloud

After AI came bioethics. Genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the trade in human organs, “the possibility of arranging one’s own death.” Everyone in the room knew which law he meant. The pope did not need to name it.

Then laïcité, France’s distinctive brand of secularism: a “just” laïcité, one that does not banish religion from public life, and Catholic schools that have their rightful place in the country. That is exactly what I argued in these pages yesterday: a laïcité that owns France’s Christian identity instead of treating it as an embarrassment.

Finally, nuclear deterrence. The pope calls it a mistaken belief that nuclear weapons guarantee security. Here I part ways with him: the bomb is what has kept France free to make its own choices for sixty years, and the same logic is why I argue for a next-generation Rafale funded by France alone. And I know of no disarmed nation that its neighbors left in peace out of sheer virtue.

The Bernardins Line, Turned Around

The final blow is the most elegant. To close, the pope quotes… Emmanuel Macron. His 2018 speech to France’s bishops at the Collège des Bernardins, in which he said that a president who took no interest in the Church and in Catholics would be “failing in his duty.”

Translation: you said the Church has a say in temporal affairs. Very well. Here is what we have to say. It concerns your law, your AI, and your laïcité.

Macron wanted to use the pope. The pope used Macron.

What My Critics Will Say

“An apostolic journey is not a state visit, so there was no slight.” That is the Élysée’s line, and it is legally accurate. It has just one flaw: the Élysée is the one that tried to turn it into a state visit. You cannot ask for the Republican Guard and then explain that you never wanted it.

“The speech was cordial.” Yes. That is precisely what makes it so formidable. An attack can be rebutted. A courteous lesson, delivered in your own house, can only be endured.

My Take

Emmanuel Macron built his presidency on staging: the Louvre, Notre-Dame, the summits, the slogans in English. This time, he faced someone who needed no stage set at all, and who made him feel it. The pope turned down the photo op, then he spoke. Of the two, it is the words that will last.