As
Le Figaro
announced last week, it is indeed the current Archbishop of Lille, Mgr Laurent Ulrich, 70, who has been chosen by Pope Francis to become the new Archbishop of Paris.
Officially appointed on April 26, he replaces Bishop Michel Aupetit, 70, whose resignation the pope had accepted in December 2021 following accusations of female liaison that the prelate has always formally denied.
To these rumors were added recurring tensions for which he was accused in the management of the diocese.
To discover
DIRECT – Presidential 2022: Emmanuel Macron re-elected, the legislative battle already launched
YOUR COMMUNE - The results of the second round of the presidential election in your area
Read alsoHow French Catholics are mobilizing for Ukrainian refugees
With 106 parishes and 500 active priests, Paris is the largest diocese in France, and also the most symbolic.
The post of Archbishop of Paris has a very important dimension of management and administration, but also a vital function of representing the Catholic Church with public authorities at the highest level of the State.
An "archbishop" is a bishop like any other, except that he is at the head of a larger diocese and that he directs an ecclesiastical "province", comparable to a region of France, with several "dioceses" of the size of a department.
Long episcopal experience
Bishop Laurent Ulrich benefits from a long episcopal experience, since he exercised this responsibility for twenty years.
First in Chambéry (2000-2008), then in the North in Lille (2008-2022).
He is a rather methodical man, renowned for his ability to manage and administer.
“He follows the files closely, he listens to all points of view but knows how to decide.
Without being authoritarian, he has a natural authority”,
confides one of his collaborators.
He is also, in the opinion of many, a good preacher.
He is known nationally for having been vice-president of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) but also president of the economic authority of the bishops of France.
Sensitive to the media, he also chaired the RCF network,
The choice of this profile nevertheless surprises many Catholic priests and bishops, as it represents a break with four Parisian decades marked by Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger.
Who had created, from his appointment in Paris in 1981, a pastoral model very different from that of the conference of bishops of the time, characterized by a well-identified Catholic Church, strongly focused on the formation of priests and a vision both classic and open of the priesthood.
This model met with great success and it still bears much fruit even if it was opposed from within the Church of France by a more progressive vision today embodied by the pontificate of Pope Francis and of which Mgr Ulrich is a heir.
An observer says it has however become, with experience,
“more pragmatic than ideological”
, as demonstrated by the way he has managed the traditionalist file in Lille over the past three years.
Read alsoEaster: Pope Francis' Way of the Cross irritates Ukraine
Many believe that the appointment of Bishop Ulrich could therefore correspond to the end of the “Lustiger” era in Paris.
But that would be without counting on the large number of priestly vocations that Cardinal Lustiger has aroused, very well-trained priests who are in office today.
Thus the choice of Rome is also explained by the long episcopal experience of Bishop Ulrich and by his age... He will be 71 next September.
He will therefore have to submit his resignation to the pope in only four years, as the rule imposes in the Church for any bishop who has reached 75 years of age.
Rather than a revolution, it is rather a period of strong transition that opens for the Church of Paris.