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Pope Benedict XVI arrived at 11am in Paris, where President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni welcomed him personally at the airport. The French president has so far reserved this honour to only two visitors: former South African President Nelson Mandela and the freed hostage of the FARC, Ingrid Betancourt.

The pontiff, aged 81, walked down the aircraft stairs in brisk steps to join the presidential couple and Paris Archbishop André Vingt-Trois, who chairs the conference of French bishops.

On his four-day visit, the leader of the Catholic Church has a busy schedule. After a meeting with Sarkozy at the Elysée palace, he is due to address cultural representatives at the recently refurbished Collège des Bernardins in the afternoon. 

"Positive secularism"
 

At a press conference after his meeting with the pope, Sarkozy renewed his call for "positive secularism" – an expression he coined during his visit to Rome last December to allow religion to play a greater role in public life. The notion had attracted virulent criticism in France, where a 1905 law strictly separates church and state.

Sarkozy said that "democracy cannot content itself with relying on arithmetic vote counts" and stated that "a dialogue with religions is appropriate in a democracy and respects secularism." He added: "It would be madness to do without it."

The French president also stressed the importance of "human dignity" when dealing with economic or scientific choices. On those issues, he told Benedict XVI: "Our duty is to listen to what you have to tell us."

Speaking effortlessly in French, the pope welcomed "positive secularism" as a "beautiful expression."

"In this historic moment, when cultures are getting more and more intertwined, I am deeply convinced that a new reflection on the true meaning and importance of secularism has become necessary," he said.

Taking a stance on social issues, Benedict XVI said it was "possible to find just solutions" to problems such as the growing gap between the rich and the poor. "It is up to the State to legislate to eradicate injustice," he added.
 

According to Cardinal Poupard, the Pope's special envoy to Lourdes, Benedict XVI is worried that "there is something broken between faith and reason."

"One of his great preoccupations - and Paris is an exceptional place to say it again - is that there is in fact a deep alliance between faith and reason," he said in an interview with FRANCE 24.

Bernard Lecomte, author of Benoît XVI : le dernier pape européen (Benedict XVI: Europe's last pope), has the same approach: "The purpose of the Pope is to say: 'If you leave God out, you are heading for a precipice'," he told FRANCE 24, adding: "On that point, Benedict XVI and Nicolas Sarkozy are pretty much in agreement."

"He speaks like a grandfather would to his grandchildren"

Friday evening, the pope is scheduled to give a vespers service at the Cathedral of Notre Dame and address young people outside the church.

Bernard Lecomte told FRANCE 24 that young Catholics "get on well" with the Pope and are grateful that he has not tried to imitate his charismatic predecessor, John Paul II. "He speaks like a grandfather would to his grandchildren," Lecomte said of Benedict. "You listen to your grandfather, and then you do what you want."

Large crowds are expected to attend Benedict XVI's mass on the Invalides open-air plaza in Paris on Saturday. The Pope will then fly to Lourdes, where he will celebrate the 150^th anniversary of the apparitions of the Virgin Mary to Bernadette Soubirous.

There, he is expected to mix less formally with the faithful, using less spectacular decorum than John Paul II did when he travelled to Lourdes in 2004. "There is an enormous difference between the trip by Pope Benedict XVI and that by his predecessor", Cardinal Poupard told FRANCE 24. "His predecessor's was a traditional apostolic visit, but he is travelling as a pilgrim."

According to Dominique Chivot, author of numerous books on the Vatican, the pope will try to make himself known in France. "How will Benedict XVI seduce the French? We know he is a rather shy man and this is a real issue for him," Chivot told FRANCE 24.

Although 200,000 people are expected to attend each of his masses, and despite the Pope and the president's joint efforts to restore what Cardinal Poupard calls "fundamental values," the influence of the French Catholic Church keeps declining. "France has ceased to be the eldest daughter of the Church a long time ago," Lecomte said. According to the front page of the French daily Libération, Benedict XVI's visit is therefore best described in two words: "Mission impossible."