Sawt Falasteen - Monaco: city of vice and a few virtues

Even local clergy are surprised.

"What is he coming to do here? He will tell us," said father Guillaume Paris, the right-hand man of Monaco's archbishop.

The Catholic micro-state of less than two square kilometres, wedged between the Alps and the Mediterranean, has built its fortune on gambling and a low tax burden.

Its promise of no income or wealth taxes has attracted the world's rich and famous -- although French and US citizens still have to pay at home.

Efforts to fight money-laundering and corruption began only recently, sex work is legal, and luxury is omnipresent -- from its shops and restaurants to the way people dress on the street.

Monaco has been rocked by a series of scandals since 2021, former associates of Prince Albert II accusing him of being under the influence of a real-estate tycoon.

Tabloid newspapers have long gobbled up and recycled every piece of gossip about the personal lives of Albert's sisters Caroline and Stephanie, as well as two of his children.

- Pews for billionaires and housekeepers -

From his popemobile, Leo XIV will not be able to miss the grandstands being assembled for the Formula 1 Grand Prix.

And he will see countless cranes working on new buildings in the world's most expensive real-estate market.

Villas selling for more than 100 million euros, new slabs of concrete being laid every day and F1 race cars tearing through the streets are hard to square with the prince's pledge to protect the environment.

The prince may also cross paths with thousands of surgeons and other experts expected in town from Thursday to Saturday for an international convention on anti-ageing treatments.

But Monaco is also steeped in Catholic tradition.

On early mornings, partygoers heading home cross paths with the faithful walking to one of many daily masses held in the principality, said Simon Ardiss, who was ordained deacon last year.

An estimated eight percent of 39,000 people living in Monaco -- a fourth of whom have nationality -- are practising Catholics, according to the local Church.

And church pews are one of the only places where billionaires, housekeepers and builders sit side by side.

Thibault Delassus, a deacon and aeroplane pilot, said faith had shielded Monaco from "a tsunami of indifference that has ravaged the Church" in neighbouring France.

- 'Work to be done' -

Religion has influenced the principality's stance on social issues.

Monaco last year rejected a law to allow assisted dying for the terminally ill and another to legalise abortion.

Pregnancy termination has however been decriminalised since 2019, meaning women who seek one in France are not prosecuted.

And members of the clergy and government point out that, beyond all the glitzy fundraisers, there are countless charities that show solidarity more quietly and help the poorest.

Ardiss the deacon said the Church was also seeking to help the faithful battle a different type of deprivation -- "poverty in relations, spiritual poverty, poverty in love, poverty in friendship".

Prince Albert gave a hint as to how he would like the pope to regard the conspicuous wealth he will be confronted with, telling La Croix Catholic newspaper it was "never easy" to strike a balance between ethics and money.

"There is also undoubtedly work to be done to move beyond this sometimes caricatured image of Monaco as a place that is solely about wealth," he told the paper.

"Of course, that side of Monaco exists, but there are also people of very modest backgrounds in the principality whom we help. Money is not the centre of our lives."

T.Ibrahim--SF-PST