President of France Emmanuel Macrongift for Pope Francis is under investigation on charges of looting by the Nazis. The pair held talks on Monday, the main topics of which were the crisis in Ukraine and the prospects for peace. The Vatican said their private talks lasted 55 minutes, but, as is customary, did not specify what they discussed.
Ahead of Mr Macron’s visit, victims of sex abuse said the Catholic Church was too slow to respond to a report showing more than 200,000 children were abused by French clergy and urged him to raise the issue directly with the pope.
The Vatican said Ukraine, particularly the humanitarian situation there, was at the forefront of President Macron’s late talks with two of the Vatican’s top diplomats. It was also about the Caucasus, the Middle East and Africa.
The topics of such meetings often mirror what is discussed in the leaders’ private papal audiences.
The President of France, accompanied by his wife Brigitte and met by a guard of honor from the Swiss Guard, handed over to the Pope the first edition of “Eternal Peace” by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, published in French in 1796. The Pope presented Macron with a medallion depicting an early plan of St. Peter’s Basilica and some of his works.
But after photos of the gift exchange were published online, experts in Poland quickly noticed that the book given to Francis by the French leader bore the stamp of a Polish reading founded by university students in the city of Lviv, formerly in eastern Poland.
The university society was founded before the Nazi occupation of Poland, leading the Polish government to suspect that the book may have been an original copy looted by the Nazis.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is investigating the circumstances of French President Emmanuel Macron’s gift to Pope Francis,” Łukasz Jaszyna, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Polish Press Agency on Tuesday, adding that he “will not make further comments on this case for the time being.”
The investigation comes as Poland has also formally demanded £1.2 trillion in World War II reparations from Germany.
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Germany, Poland’s biggest trading partner, said all financial claims related to the war had been settled.
But earlier this month, Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau signed a diplomatic note to Germany regarding World War II reparations, formalizing Poland’s demand for compensation ahead of a visit by its top diplomat to Berlin.
“(The note) expresses the position of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland that the parties should take immediate measures for a final and effective… resolution of the issue of the consequences of aggression and German occupation,” Rau said at a press conference.
About six million Poles, including three million Polish Jews, were killed during the war, and Warsaw was razed to the ground after the 1944 uprising, in which about 200,000 civilians died.
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In 1953, the communist rulers of Poland at the time abandoned all demands for war reparations under pressure from the Soviet Union, which wanted to free East Germany, also a satellite of the USSR, from any obligations.
Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party says the agreement is invalid because Poland failed to agree on fair compensation.
Since coming to power in 2015, she has renewed calls for reparations and made the promotion of Poland’s war victims a centerpiece of her appeal to nationalism.
The ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has repeatedly called for compensation since coming to power in 2015, but Poland has yet to formally demand compensation.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1687875/emmanuel-macron-gift-pope-nazi-loot
