Ségolène Royal has suddenly wrapped her campaign in the blue, white and red flag of France while singing La Marseillaise. This might sound predictable for any presidential candidate, but for one from the French left, in fact, it's not. The Socialists have long felt uneasy with the trappings of nationalism, and many preferred singing the Internationale as their anthem. Not Ségo, it seems. She wants the "tricolore" flag flying in front yards and from apartment windows on Bastille Day. "We have to re-conquer the national symbols," she said on a campaign tour through the generally conservative south of France. As Madame Royal tries to recapture the spirit of the French Revolution it's no wonder she's caricatured on the front page of today's Le Monde as a topless Marianne, the incarnation of rebellion.
At the same time and in very much the same vein, Royal is taking up the cudgels of anti-clericalism. Some three-quarters of the French are baptized Catholic, but few attend church regularly. Suspicion of clerical influence dates back to the depredations of the monarchy that ruled by "divine right" before its overthrow in 1789. Resistance to the political interference of Catholic priests in the 19th century is at the heart of the French Republic's well-enshrined secularism.
But none of Royal's major opponents on the right -- Nicolas Sarkozy, François Bayrou and Jean-Marie Le Pen -- would take such a hard line as she has and, indeed, the latter two proudly flaunt their Catholicism. So in the final weeks of the campaign, Royal's blunt attitude toward the teachings of the church could emerge as a defining issue.
In Maintenant [Now], a book of interviews with Royal by Elle Magazine's Marie-Françoise Colombani, the candidate confronts directly Pope Benedict XVI's effort to reassert Catholic values and the church's influence over European politics. The book is to be published Monday and is excerpted in the weekend Le Monde.
For starters, Royal's personal choices are a refutation of Catholic teachings about the preservation of religiously sanctioned family institutions. If Royal is elected, she and her partner François Hollande -- who is the father of their four children and also the head of the Socialist Party -- would be the first unmarried couple in the Élysée. Adding a little tabloid spice is widespread but unsubstantiated gossip about relationships they may have outside their partnership.
Royal, 53, responds by talking about how she and Hollande are both crazy about their kids. She professes (perhaps too much) that the children have done so well because their parents' ties, despite rumors to the contrary, "are strong and loving": "Yes, we are still together and yes, we are still living together. If that were not the case, I can tell you that with the number of paparazzi following us, you'd know it."
(If there's a regret for Royal, it seems to be that she didn't take up a recent offer to tie the knot in French Polynesia: "That would have been wildly romantic, a marriage in canoes at the other end of the world!" She suggests Hollande's advisors nixed the idea for fear it would be too much of a spectacle and too easy for political opponents to ridicule.)
Even when Colombani doesn't ask, Royal broaches themes that are anathema to the Vatican. She goes out of her way, for instance, to praise conservative French politician Simone Veil's support for freedom of choice legislation even though Veil was "dealt with in a shameful manner" by other conservatives. The right to an abortion "is, for all women, a great sign of progress," says Royal.
But Royal saves her full broadside against Pope Benedict for a question about his remarks on Islam at the University of Regensburg in Germany last September. In Benedict's dense, scholarly discourse about reason and faith he cited the thoughts of a 14th century Byzantine emperor: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
The citation, often quoted out of context, caused an uproar among many Muslim clerics. Rage against the pope was linked to a handful of violent acts in Muslim countries, including the murder of an elderly nun in Somalia.
Royal critiques the pope's remarks at length:
"It wasn't a misstatement: Benedict XVI is an erudite university professor who knows how to weigh his words," she says in Maintenant. "Nor was it a very useful position to take, because the central element of his speech at Regensburg is not the condemnation of the violent instrumentalization of Islam, which the majority of Muslims condemn as well, it is a much more questionable assertion: that the Christian religion, which he defines as born from the encounter between Biblical faith and Greek thought, would be, according to him, the only one to have a privileged relationship with Reason and would constitute, now as in the past, the foundation of European identity. That is to forget that Greek philosophy came back to us thanks to Arab-Muslim translators and that in the Middle Ages the main thinkers who debated among themselves the relationship between faith and reason were Christians, Jews and Muslims.
"Later, the Inquisition and the bonfires on which thousands of women accused of sorcery were burned did not testify especially well to the harmonious marriage between christianism [as she puts it] and Reason. The same goes for the Wars of Religion that bloodied Europe. And we know, in France, what it took in 1905 to separate the Catholic Church and the state," says Royal. (The law of 1905 also provided, more recently, the legal basis to exclude Muslim veils and other religious dress from state schools.) "To remember that is not to insult the Church of today, but to measure how far we've come."
"As far as Europe is concerned," says Royal, "it's one thing to measure the influence that christianism has on its history over the long term, and another to assert that its foundation is Christian. Europe is not a religion or a geography: it's a political project borne by those who believe and those who do not believe in heaven. Our Muslim fellow citizens are entirely European because Europe, contrary to what's said about it in certain right-wing circles, is not a 'Christian club': remember the unfortunate citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina, so often Muslim and so powerfully European!
"It's not up to me to pronounce on theology, that's a matter for believers," Royal concludes. "But because the pope is a moral authority whose voice carries around the world, I hope that he'll never endorse the disastrous and simplistic theory of a clash of civilizations."
Photograph of the weekend Le Monde with Plantu's caricature of Ségolène Royal on the front page by Christopher Dickey
