The large crowds that turned out for Pope Leo everywhere in France surprised everyone – not least, sad to say, the French bishops. Let’s hope that his visit has even greater effects. But just days later, France is gripped by widespread rioting and arson, being misreported as “student unrest,” but actually a far-left operation with Islamist collaborators. In the message the pope read at his reception by French President Emmanuel Macron, Leo proposed what can only be called “corrections” to the three terms (liberté, égalité, fraternité) that marked the French Revolution. It was a bold move, but he needs to be even bolder, to remedy what’s ailing France and much of the West.
If one were asked (one is not holding one’s breath), one would say that Leo would do well to go much further, and make this a project for his whole papacy. Because as Blessed Fulton Sheen – also recently in the news – already saw in his 1938 book Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, underneath those seemingly simple and good words, perverse developments rose from the very start.
The French revolutionaries began using the guillotine and other instruments of mass terror on religious figures, and then – as
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