Duke of Anjou sees the Pope in Paris

His Holiness Pope Benedictus XVI was yesterday welcomed by the President of France and Madame Sarkozy-Bruni on a four day official papal visit to the country. As always when the Pope comes, everyone wants a chance to meet him personally and without doubt many political party donors got a free ticket to meet and greet with him as the head of the catholic church was welcomed at the Paris-Orly airport and then whisked off to the presidential Èlysée Palace were the invited crowd included both Madame Sarkozy-Bruni’s mother and grandmother.

Among the guests invited to the palace was also one of the pretenders to the French throne, the Duke of Anjou and his beautiful Venezuelan banking heiress, now titled the Duchess of Anjou, María Margarita. Louis Alphonse, the head of the house of Borbon who would be King Louis XX of France if he was more than a pretender, is an active catholic and member of The Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta. The couple also took the opportunity to visit newest of the two barges named “Le Fleuron Saint-Michel” on the river Seine, a social institution of the Order of Malta providing shelter to the homeless who are in between being outsiders of the society and about to re-integrate.

On Saturday the Duke and Duchess attended the Pope’s outdoors mass held outside Les Invalides.