Pope Francis will fly to France’s second city on Friday about 500 years since the last papal visit to Marseille, on a mission of hope for countries on the Mediterranean afflicted by natural or man-made disasters.
From the drownings of migrants trying to cross in overcrowded, ramshackle boats, to deadly conflict and the unimaginable horrors of the Moroccan earthquake and Libyan floods, the region has been scarred by human tragedy.
Pope Francis has made facing up to challenges the defining preoccupation of his pontificate. The Mediterranean, with more than 20 countries extending to 46,000km of coastline, is a deeply troubled region.
Even Marseille’s malaise, as a city in the grip of drug-related killings police appear powerless to prevent, fades into insignificance as death and suffering occur at sea and on land around the basin.
The Pope will lead prayers at the imposing Notre-Dame de la Garde basilica perched high above Marseille and during the highlight of his visit, an open-air Mass at the Velodrome, home to Olympique de Marseille, a football club with a proudly multicultural history.
If ever a religious figure’s healing powers were needed, now is the time
Up to 300,000 people, including pilgrims from every corner of France and far beyond, are expected in the city to greet the pontiff.
The 67,000-seat stadium will be full and many more will gather outside during his Popemobile tour, alongside the vast beaches and green spaces of the Prado.
The visit, marking the end of a week-long series of debates in Marseille on key issues affecting the region, immediately follows the presence in France of the British monarch King Charles III and coincides with the Rugby World Cup currently being held in the country.
France are to play Namibia at the Velodrome on the eve of the Pope’s arrival.
With three major events clashing, French security services are stretched. The papal visit alone will be policed by 5,000 officers and 1,000 security personnel, and Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told fellow ministers to avoid non-essential travel.
The Notre-Dame de la Garde, first on the itinerary of Pope Francis’s two-day visit, offers a stunning spectacle to anyone arriving in Marseille by air, sea, road or rail.
The basilica’s statue of the Virgin Mary stands as a symbol of protection for all on land or at sea. Nearby is a commemoration of the lost lives of sailors and migrants.
Amid warfare, disaster and seafaring tragedy, the global head of the Catholic church may well reflect on the limits of the protection the statue actually bestows upon the city itself and the wider region.
If ever a religious figure’s healing powers were needed, now is the time.
Rencontres Mediterraneennes (Mediterranean Meetings), as the conference is called, has brought together Catholic clerics and young, multifaith delegates from around the Mediterranean.
It covers economic inequality and climate change as well as migration, and the Pope will address the closing stages.
He will also meet President Emmanuel Macron. A wide-ranging discussion is expected, although the alarming escalation of the migration crisis – thousands of African immigrants streamed ashore on the Italian island of Lampedusa in just 48 hours – may well dominate their exchanges. The Elysee says the pair will also discuss the war in Ukraine, turmoil in the Sahel, climate change and poverty.
Papal visits to France have been rare in recent years. Pope Francis has travelled to the country only once.
On an away-day trip to Strasbourg, in north-eastern France, in 2014, he addressed the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, where he urged Europe to shake off a “somewhat elderly and haggard” image and forge a united response to prevent the Mediterranean becoming a “vast cemetery” for migrants.
Then as now, he characterised his visit as one to the city in question, not France. And he and Mr Macron will be less than wholeheartedly in agreement on migration, given the President’s inclination to pursue policies that appease populist sentiment.
The plight of migrants is close to the Pope’s heart. Within months of taking office in 2013, he made Lampedusa the destination of his first pastoral visit.
The region is scarred by human tragedy
The President’s entourage accepts that the Pope’s emphasis is on a “duty of protection, assistance, reception”, but insists this should not produce “permanent opposition”.
A senior presidential aide cited the pope’s “strong interest for the answers to be constructed at a European level” and his belief that the solutions should be those that avoided mass exodus from the migrants’ own countries.
The momentous challenge of migration lends great importance to the Pope’s stay in Marseille and the conference preceding it, a significance comparable to that of the last papal visit there.
In 1533, Pope Clement VII, an enthusiastic strategic matchmaker, shrugged off illness to travel from Rome to officiate at the lavish wedding of Catherine de Medici and the future King Henry II of France at the Eglise Saint-Ferreol les Augustins.
The bride and groom were only 14 years old but Catherine would become, in the view of some historians, Europe’s most important woman of the 16th century.
It is tempting to wonder what 21st-century social media and opportunist politicians would have made of that event and its relevance to a continent in turbulent political and religious times.
Mr Macron’s decision to attend the Velodrome Mass has provoked predictable controversy in France.
The far-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, never slow to rise to indignation, according to the commentator Denis Carreaux, accuses the President of gatecrashing the visit in flagrant defiance of France’s secular status, established by its 1905 law separating church and state.
Communists share Mr Melenchon’s view but Mr Macron, by no means the first French president to attend a religious service, brushes the polemic aside. “I think it's my place to be there,” he said.
“I won't be there as a Catholic, I'll be there as President of the republic, which is indeed secular. I will not carry out any religious practice during the Mass.”
There are, inevitably, people in Marseille who resent the cost, fuss and inconvenience of a papal visit.
“It's going to be unmanageable, the equivalent of three Marseille v Paris Saint-Germain football games all over the Prado,” one disgruntled resident told French media.
For the Catholic church, however, it is an uplifting, socially inclusive occasion.
“When the Pope celebrates Mass at the Velodrome, a place that brings together Marseille in all its diversity, it will be as if he were visiting every Marseillais,” Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, Archbishop of Marseille, told the official Vatican news service.
“He comes to Marseille to draw our attention to the Mediterranean, the challenges it has to face.”
For the Marseille tourist office, the visit is a “fantastic opportunity” for a city that personifies the spirit of vivre ensemble (different cultures in harmony).
To the archbishop, it is another step in a pilgrimage that began in Lampedusa and has taken Pope Francis to 43 countries, including South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Palestine.
It has been a punishing schedule for a man now 86.
In 2019, he visited Abu Dhabi where he jointly signed, with the Egyptian Grand Imam of Al Azhar, Dr Ahmed Al Tayeb, the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together.
There are political as well as religious dimensions to Pope Francis’s trip to a beautiful and vibrant city that is currently ill at ease with itself, a gesture Cardinal Aveline sees as a reminder that faced with the drama and human misery of the Mediterranean, France “cannot just look away”.
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Our legal columnist
Name: Yousef Al Bahar
Advocate at Al Bahar & Associate Advocates and Legal Consultants, established in 1994
Education: Mr Al Bahar was born in 1979 and graduated in 2008 from the Judicial Institute. He took after his father, who was one of the first Emirati lawyers
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Leicester City 5 (Vardy 37' pen, 54', 58' pen, Maddison 77', Tielemans 88' pen)
Man of the match: Jamie Vardy (Leicester City)
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Milestones on the road to union
1970
October 26: Bahrain withdraws from a proposal to create a federation of nine with the seven Trucial States and Qatar.
December: Ahmed Al Suwaidi visits New York to discuss potential UN membership.
1971
March 1: Alex Douglas Hume, Conservative foreign secretary confirms that Britain will leave the Gulf and “strongly supports” the creation of a Union of Arab Emirates.
July 12: Historic meeting at which Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid make a binding agreement to create what will become the UAE.
July 18: It is announced that the UAE will be formed from six emirates, with a proposed constitution signed. RAK is not yet part of the agreement.
August 6: The fifth anniversary of Sheikh Zayed becoming Ruler of Abu Dhabi, with official celebrations deferred until later in the year.
August 15: Bahrain becomes independent.
September 3: Qatar becomes independent.
November 23-25: Meeting with Sheikh Zayed and Sheikh Rashid and senior British officials to fix December 2 as date of creation of the UAE.
November 29: At 5.30pm Iranian forces seize the Greater and Lesser Tunbs by force.
November 30: Despite a power sharing agreement, Tehran takes full control of Abu Musa.
November 31: UK officials visit all six participating Emirates to formally end the Trucial States treaties
December 2: 11am, Dubai. New Supreme Council formally elects Sheikh Zayed as President. Treaty of Friendship signed with the UK. 11.30am. Flag raising ceremony at Union House and Al Manhal Palace in Abu Dhabi witnessed by Sheikh Khalifa, then Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.
December 6: Arab League formally admits the UAE. The first British Ambassador presents his credentials to Sheikh Zayed.
December 9: UAE joins the United Nations.
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Wednesday, June 17 (Kick-offs uae times) Aston Villa v Sheffield United 9pm; Manchester City v Arsenal 11pm
Friday, June 19 Norwich v Southampton 9pm; Tottenham v Manchester United 11pm
Saturday, June 20 Watford v Leicester 3.30pm; Brighton v Arsenal 6pm; West Ham v Wolves 8.30pm; Bournemouth v Crystal Palace 10.45pm
Sunday, June 21 Newcastle v Sheffield United 2pm; Aston Villa v Chelsea 7.30pm; Everton v Liverpool 10pm
Monday, June 22 Manchester City v Burnley 11pm (Sky)
Tuesday, June 23 Southampton v Arsenal 9pm; Tottenham v West Ham 11.15pm
Wednesday, June 24 Manchester United v Sheffield United 9pm; Newcastle v Aston Villa 9pm; Norwich v Everton 9pm; Liverpool v Crystal Palace 11.15pm
Thursday, June 25 Burnley v Watford 9pm; Leicester v Brighton 9pm; Chelsea v Manchester City 11.15pm; Wolves v Bournemouth 11.15pm
Sunday June 28 Aston Villa vs Wolves 3pm; Watford vs Southampton 7.30pm
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Wednesday July 1 Bournemouth vs Newcastle 9pm; Everton vs Leicester 9pm; West Ham vs Chelsea 11.15pm
Thursday July 2 Arsenal vs Norwich 9pm; Manchester City vs Liverpool 11.15pm
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if you go
The flights
Etihad, Emirates and Singapore Airlines fly direct from the UAE to Singapore from Dh2,265 return including taxes. The flight takes about 7 hours.
The hotel
Rooms at the M Social Singapore cost from SG $179 (Dh488) per night including taxes.
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Makan Makan Walking group tours costs from SG $90 (Dh245) per person for about three hours. Tailor-made tours can be arranged. For details go to www.woknstroll.com.sg
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Top New Zealand cop on policing the virtual world
New Zealand police began closer scrutiny of social media and online communities after the attacks on two mosques in March, the country's top officer said.
The killing of 51 people in Christchurch and wounding of more than 40 others shocked the world. Brenton Tarrant, a suspected white supremacist, was accused of the killings. His trial is ongoing and he denies the charges.
Mike Bush, commissioner of New Zealand Police, said officers looked closely at how they monitored social media in the wake of the tragedy to see if lessons could be learned.
“We decided that it was fit for purpose but we need to deepen it in terms of community relationships, extending them not only with the traditional community but the virtual one as well," he told The National.
"We want to get ahead of attacks like we suffered in New Zealand so we have to challenge ourselves to be better."
MATCH INFO
Borussia Dortmund 0
Bayern Munich 1 (Kimmich 43')
Man of the match: Joshua Kimmich (Bayern Munich)