Could the Catholic Church swing the French election for Valérie Pécresse?

Might France have this year not only its first woman president, but its first practising Catholic head of state since Charles de Gaulle , who left the Élysée in 1969?

The rise of Val é rie P é cresse, a 54-year-old mother of three married to one of France ’ s wealthiest Catholic businessmen, to be a serious challenger to the very non-Catholic Emmanuel Macron shows how in the new era of identity politics religion plays a part not seen in recent decades.

There is little doubt that Joe Biden ’ s quiet but clearly evident Irish Catholicism helped him against the almost Pagan style of Donald Trump.

The Vatican never sleeps and is now praying for France to be headed by a president who is now openly courting the Catholic vote.

General de Gaulle was a good Catholic, but when he went to a high mass as Head of State, he never took communion to show that he respected the French tradition of laïcité, or non-religious governance.

P é cresse is a practising Catholic. As a lawmaker, une deput é e , she voted against both same-sex marriage and allowing gay adoption. She was a protégée of Jacques Chirac and promoted to ministerial office by Nicolas Sarkozy — two men with much the same approach to women as Boris Johnson.

When she ran for the presidency of the Îsle de France regional council — the mostly rich area around Paris — she said that she would defund LGBT organisations. Though she won the election, in office she has been less confrontational.

Religion or faith is the unspoken politics of France. The biggest demonstrations against François Mitterrand during his presidency came when he tried to end “les écoles libres” — the Catholic-run schools which follow the national state curriculum, but whose teachers are Catholics and — like voluntary-aided church schools in England — are all funded by the state. These schools became popular as a way of avoiding sending children in poorer areas to normal state schools, where a majority of children had African or Arab immigrant parents.

In recent years the number one political theme for the extreme Right, but also for other politicians in France, is the number of Muslim immigrants. Equally salient is the question of wearing a hijab, head-scarf or other face and body covering imposed on girls and woman by some Muslim men without any backing in Koranic law.

Les Républicains , the former Gaullists, are the centre-Right party of Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, Michel Barnier and now Val é rie P é cresse . They have also at different times and different levels of government called for limitations on overt public affirmations of Islamic identity.

It was once said the Anglican Church was the Conservative Party at prayer. It would be wrong to say that French conservatism or organised centre-Right politics is Catholic, but the Catholic Church is far more present in French life, especially outside big cities and in the middle class professional and social life of non-socialist French people, than is the case in Britain.

Eric Zemmour, the far-right polemicist, has based his campaign on appealing to that traditionalist Catholic identity vote. Although himself an Algerian Jew, he appears weekly on TV or writes in Figaro, the Daily Telegraph of France, to denounce “the great replacement” of white Catholic France by a nation of many colours and races. His launch video was full of images of the medieval grandeur of the Most Christian Kings of France, of Joan of Arc, of a Catholic France leading Europe and civilising the world.

Zemmour — a wizened, goat-like 63-year-old married man, has just made his 28-year-old assistant pregnant. So he conforms to the high French political tradition of preaching one thing and practising another.

His far- Right opponent, Marine Le Pen, at least has a party with a core of support behind her. She also invokes Joan of Arc as someone who raised the flag of France against external threats. It was England in the era of St Joan; now it is Brussels for Mme Le Pen.

In her first move after winning the nomination, Val é rie P é cresse visited Armenia just before Christmas, to express solidarity with Armenian Christians being invaded by Muslim armies from Azerbaijan, backed by Muslim Turkey.

The plight of persecuted Christians in the Orient, especially the French speaking Middle East countries, makes front-page news in France. In lining herself up alongside them, P é cresse hopes to win Catholic voters.

Mme Pécresse’s instant visit to Armenia may backfire, as the Armenian government is now acting as a Kremlin puppet in organising an intervention to put down the pro-democracy uprising in Kazakhstan.

Will it work for Valerie P é cresse? Her first task is to get into the 2 nd and final round of the presidential contest. The two votes will be held on the second and fourth Sundays in April. The latest polls taken early in January for the first round put Macron on 25%, P é cresse and Le Pen on 17% and Zemmour on 12%. If Zemmour drops out and the hard-Right consolidates around Marine Le Pen, then it will be a re-run of the 2017 presidential contest between Macron and Le Pen — and Macron will be re-elected.

If the far-Right split, then P é cresse gets the biggest number of votes below Macron (the hopelessly divided Left are not in the race) and goes into the second round against him. And she then will be a very serious threat to Macron ’ s re-election . France may have as its first female president a woman who goes to Mass on most Sundays.

  Denis MacShane lived in France and wrote the first biography of François Mitterrand in English. He appears regularly on French radio and TV. He was Tony Blair’s Minister for Europe

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