By Fr. Raymond J. de Souza.

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Now for today's column...

From his first trip as pope to Lampedusa, the travel destinations of Pope Francis have been idiosyncratic. But none quite as much as this week when, after declining the invitation for the reopening of Notre Dame in Paris, he is visiting Corsica on Sunday.

Pope Francis has decided not to visit the major European capitals, except if obliged by necessity, as when he visited Krakow and Lisbon for World Youth Day. So his European visits are off the usual papal track.

Corsica will be his third visit to France. He visited Strasbourg in 2014 to address the European Parliament, but declined to visit Notre Dame de Strasbourg, even though the cathedral was celebrating its millennium! He was in and out of the city in a matter of hours. He visited Marseille in 2023 for a conference on Mediterranean migration, but insisted: "I'll go to Marseille, but not to France." And now Corsica - which is a "region" of France - a week after not going to Paris for Notre Dame.

The headline at Jesuit-run America was blunt on the juxtaposition: "Pope Francis will visit Corsica Dec. 15 after skipping Paris reopening of Notre Dame." The Corsica papal Mass will be in a square that includes a large statue of Napoleon, the most infamous of all Corsicans.

Napoleon also figures prominently in the history of Notre Dame de Paris, where he arranged to have himself crowned emperor in the presence of Pope Pius VII.

All the recent attention to the history of Notre Dame meant attention too for Napoleon who, after the Terror, seized power and moderated some of the bloody extremism of revolutionary France. He concluded a concordat with the Holy See, negotiated by Pius VII's secretary of state, Ercole Consalvi.

Those negotiations are most remembered for the exchange between Napoleon and Consalvi. Inflated with a sense of his own power, Napoleon tried to intimidate Consalvi, threatening to destroy the Church Cardinal Consalvi replied that no emperor could accomplish what eighteen centuries of French clergy could not do. It was a reminder of the limits of state power, and that the greater danger to the Church is always from within.

This year marks the bicentennial of Consalvi's death, and it was marked in Rome by a celebratory conference. Consalvi is a legend in Vatican diplomacy, not only for the concordat with Napoleon but, post-Napoleon, for winning back the papal states in Italy at the Congress of Vienna.

The praise is deserved. In 1798, Napoleon's troops invaded Rome, kidnapped Pope Pius VI and eventually conveyed him to France as a prisoner, where he died in 1799. That two years later Napoleon would sign a concordat with the Holy See is evidence of Napoleon's willingness to make enemies and allies as needed, as well of Consalvi's skill.

When Pope Francis sees Napoleon's statue in Corsica, he might think about whether Consalvi has lessons for papal diplomacy today. He was a model of realistic engagement with hostile powers. He negotiated with tyrants. He ma...