The day before Pope John Paul II's arrival in Paris was to have been one of reflection, prayer and catechisms in churches, the organisers of the 12th World Youth Day said. But a group of about 50 Catholic youths attending the six-day festival had other ideas.
Apparently inspired by the Pope's planned visit tomorrow to the grave of his friend Prof Jerome Lejeune, a renowned antiabortion campaigner, the young people marched into the Ambroise-Pare Hospital in the Bois de Boulogne, just west of Paris and near the Longchamp racetrack where the Pontiff will say Mass on Sunday.
Calling themselves "survivors of legalised abortion", the protesters chanted anti-abortion slogans to the tune of hymns and said their group was named after Prof Lejeune, who died in 1994.
The hospital they invaded contains a small abortion unit, but the group left peaceably under the watchful eye of the police.
The incident heightened fears that the papal visit could revive the dormant debate on abortion in France, where some 170,000 pregnancies are terminated every year. Anti-abortion protesters have carried out 119 raids on abortion clinics in the past decade, often using Prof Lejeune's name.
Church officials stress that the Pope's pilgrimage to Prof Lejeune's grave at the Chalo-SaintMars cemetery south of Paris is "strictly private".
But it has been severely criticised by the French Family Planning Movement and women's rights activists.
Yesterday Mr Jean-Marc Sabathe, the leader of the small Socialist Radical Party, which has three government ministers, weighed in with opponents of the cemetery visit. Mr Sabathe said the gesture was a deliberate attempt to legitimise the use of violence by pro-life groups.
This is John Paul II's sixth journey to France since he became Pope in 1978, making it one of the three countries he has travelled to most, along with the US and his native Poland.
In addition to abortion, at least two other controversies have surfaced even before the Pontiff's scheduled arrival at Orly airport this morning.
Protestants were insulted that the Pope's Sunday Mass for half a million people is to be held on the 425th anniversary of the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants, while secular groups have objected to what they claim is government subsidisation of the Catholic Church.
An extra 7,000 policemen and soldiers will be on duty in Paris from today until the Pope's departure on Sunday evening.
Only 70,000 young French people are attending the World Youth Days. This is the first time since John Paul II created the festival in 1985 that foreigners outnumber host country participants, by four to one.
In a rare interview with the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, published yesterday, the Pope addressed the issue of French indifference to religion:
"I know that the church in France . . . is experiencing a drop in religious practice and a decline in vocations. This means that it is passing through the trial of the Cross . . .
"But you must live this impoverishment like a purification and, in one sense, it must stimulate you."
