Why might Pope Francis want to go to Corsica?

Cardinal François-Xavier Bustillo, bishop of Ajaccio, told La Tribune on Sunday, November 17, that Pope Francis would be going to Corsica in mid-December. The purpose of the trip would be to conclude a symposium on “Popular Religiosity in the Mediterranean.” The Vatican has now confirmed the event.

The Diocese of Ajaccio and its bishop, Cardinal François Bustillo, have organized the symposium, which takes place from December 14 to 15. The Basque-born prelate has invited a dozen bishops and academics from Corsica, Sardinia, Spain, Sicily, and the south of France to share their experience of the different expressions of "popular religiosity," whether religious, cultural, political or social. Popular religiosity refers to expressions of faith and devotions among the faithful people of God, such as processions, or observances attached to certain saints or symbols.

Discreetly invited by Cardinal Bustillo, Pope Francis has decided to make his personal contribution to this reflection. This choice may come as a surprise, but it can be explained by the Pope's constant desire to put the People of God at the heart of a Church often tempted by a form of elitism — which the Pope refers to as clericalism.

In his latest encyclical, Dilexit nos, which is about one expression of popular piety, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Pontiff sharply criticizes an attitude that places “God as so sublime, separate, and distant” and therefore comes to regard “affective expressions of popular piety as dangerous and in need of ecclesiastical oversight.” And against this drift, Corsica can contrast the vitality of its popular faith.

Corsica's popular religious culture is characterized by its predominantly village-based dimension. It has developed within confraternities, associations of lay people at the service of the Church and specifically attached to the land that gives them their identity.

The Corsicans have also created a singular sacred polyphony. It has its origins both in the influence of the mendicant orders — Dominicans and Franciscans — on the evangelization of the island and in the pastoral culture of Corsican shepherds.

Around the confraternities — the first of which came into being in the 15th century — a rich religious culture developed, with its own devotions and festivals, in cooperation with the local clergy. However, in the 20th century, these traditions deteriorated to the point of almost disappearing.

This was a consequence of the island's demographic transformation, with the depopulation of the villages and the concentration of the population in larger towns, but also of the devaluation of the Corsican language and culture. A process in which the Church played a part, notes Italian anthropologist Alessandra Broccolini, who believes it was “accelerated by the replacement of Latin by the vernacular following the Second Vatican Council,” a process which imposed modern songs in French.

However, from the 1980s onwards, this religious heritage, which is so much a part of Corsican culture, was to be renewed in a period of crisis that saw the emergence of nationalist and autonomist demands — a trend known as “riaquistu” (“reclaiming”). Committed researchers deciphered 15th-century polyphonic manuscripts and rediscovered the charters of ancient brotherhoods. They revived these practices with a success that has grown, especially since the end of the violent struggles that marked the 1990s and 2000s.

Jean-Charles Adami, who will be speaking at the colloquium, believes that the confraternities have become the driving force behind a “form of inculturation” of the faith in Corsica, which involves taking into account the specific characteristics of the place and the existing religious and cultural heritage.

This inculturation has often been promoted by the pontiff since the beginning of his pontificate, but very rarely with regard to the Church of the secularized West, which he more readily criticizes for a form of “rigidity” in its relationship with traditions.

Adami also notes the extent to which the dynamic of “reclaiming rurality” promoted by the confraternities is in line with the Pope's discourse on the peripheries, but is also in osmosis with the ecological and social magisterium of Laudato si'. These are all themes that Pope Francis could develop during his visit to Ajaccio.