New French president's Catholic roots strong, but current ties weak

Published: 2007-05-08

PARIS (CNS) -- When Nicolas Sarkozy is inaugurated as the president of France May 16, Catholics in the country will have some reasons to celebrate and some reasons to be wary. Sarkozy, the 52-year-old head of the Union for a Popular Movement political party, defeated Socialist Party candidate Segolene Royal in the French elections May 6, winning 51.3 percent of the vote. The son of a Hungarian immigrant and a French mother with roots in Greece, Nicolas Paul Stephane Sarkozy de Nagy-Bocsa attended a private Catholic high school and describes himself as Catholic but an infrequent churchgoer. "I am of Catholic culture, Catholic tradition, Catholic faith," he said in his 2005 book, "The Republic, Religions and Hope." "Even if my religious practice is episodic, I acknowledge myself as a member of the Catholic Church." Sarkozy's maternal grandfather, with whom the family lived after his father left his mother, was a Sephardic Jew from Greece who converted to Catholicism when he married a French Catholic woman in 1917.

Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .