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Sunday, Aug 01, 2004

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France's amour, at 95

By Amelia Gentleman

PARIS, JULLY 31. One might have expected Sophie Marceau to win, or perhaps the more establishment figure of Catherine Deneuve, or even the sultry Juliette Binoche. Instead, the title of France's favourite woman was awarded last week — to the bewilderment once again of the country's film and television elite — to a 95-year-old nun who spent much of her life living alongside rubbish sweepers in the slums of Cairo.

This is the third year running that Soeur Emmanuelle has fought off more glamorous candidates to win — something that surprises even her. But she has a clear sense of perspective: ``They're not going to ask for my popularity ranking at the gates of heaven. No one is going to inscribe my score on my tombstone.''

Her supporters claim that her enduring popularity says much about the French nation's thirst for philanthropic values in a society swamped with consumerism and the trivia of reality TV.

A nun makes an unlikely partner for the French football captain, Zinedine Zidane, who was named France's most popular man in the same list published by Le Journal du Dimanche, researched by the polling organisation Ifop.

Zidane, however, only made it to the top of the list because Abbe Pierre, an elderly charity worker and priest who was ranked first a total of 17 times, bowed out of the contest after his win last year.

The appeal of the bespectacled, hunched and wrinkled figure of Emmanuelle is not immediately obvious, even though her life story is as familiar to glossy magazine readers as the biographies of the nation's leading television stars. Born Madeleine Cinquin in Brussels in 1908, she spent her early childhood travelling between Paris and London with her parents, who were manufacturers of expensive lingerie.

She was six when her father drowned — an event she witnessed. She went on to gain a degree in philosophy from the Sorbonne before taking her vows in 1929.

In 1971, on the brink of retirement, she was so revolted by the conditions of rubbish collectors in Cairo that she decided to make her home among them. Her domestic popularity began when she returned home in 1993, having become too elderly for slum life.

She became a media hit, impressing talk-show hosts and audiences alike with her straight-talking approach and passion for her work.

"People are shocked when they hear her speak. There's a disconnection between her appearance as an old and fragile nun and her ability to shake the French nation's collective consciousness,'' said Trao Nguyen, the director of her charitable foundation.

Her popularity is also tied up with France's latent Catholicism. "It is very strange that at a time when France's churches are emptying and there's a serious deficit of people wanting to take orders, that the country should vote for a nun as its favourite female figure,'' Jerome Fourquet, the director of reseach at Ifop, said. "But although the Church has much less influence, people still aspire to its values, which she embodies.''

Emmanuelle moved effortlessly from Cairo slums to the salons of Paris, where she charmed politicians and benefactors into donating money to her charities, which support deprived children around the world.

President Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, the Finance Minister, have both found time to visit her in her nunnery.

Emmanuelle has also won hearts in France by her strangely secular approach to life. Her religious views are maverick; she approves of contraception and the idea of priests marrying.

She is not interested in setting up a religious following, as Mother Teresa did, and is careful that her charity work should be independent of the Church.

Indeed, she dismisses comparisons between herself and Mother Teresa as "ridiculous.'' "It's like comparing a mouse and a mountain,'' she says. Recently she branched out into philosophical tracts, and this April published What is Life For? which has sold around 120,000 copies. Emmanuelle came fifth in France's 50 most loved personalities.—

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France's amour, at 95