Alexandre Chauveau, edited by Laura Laplaud
The mass of the parliamentarians took place Tuesday evening at the Sainte-Clotilde basilica in Paris. The new Archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Ulrich, presided over it before some twenty deputies and senators. And even in the Church, politics is never far away.
“Love one another”, this famous passage from the Gospel may have inspired parliamentarians. A few streets from the National Assembly, the new Archbishop of Paris Mgr Ulrich presided over the “parliamentarians’ mass” in front of some twenty deputies and senators. And even in the Church, politics is never far away.
A particularly political mass
It was a very special mass that took place on Tuesday evening at the Sainte-Clotilde basilica in Paris. In the front row, facing the masterful altar of Sainte-Clotilde, Éric Woerth and Gilles Le Gendre, seated in front of a dozen deputies. The setting is unusual to say the least and the mass pronounced by Bishop Ulrich particularly political.
“On the question of the end of life, I said that we had to listen to the words of those who accompany the dying. The objective is not first of all to leave life, but the objective, it’s to fully live the last moments,” he said.
At the heart of the mass, end of life, climate change and war in Ukraine…
At the heart of the homily, the end of life, therefore, but also climate change or the war in Ukraine. A mass criticized by the Nupes in the name of secularism. But the member of the Rassemblement national Laure Lavalette sees it on the contrary as a form of logic. “The quest for the common good is also a kind of supreme charity. So the search for the common good is indeed the charity that one owes to one’s people. I am delighted to go to mass on Sunday and sit the rest of the time in the National Assembly,” she said.
Senator Les Républicains de l’Oise Jérôme Bascher read a prayer during the mass and also sees no contradiction with his parliamentary commitment: “We can have religious commitments without it necessarily being the priority in Parliament. The State secular works for me very well that way and I am very attached to secularism.”
After an hour of communion, everyone takes their clothes as deputies ready to do battle in the hemicycle.