Cardinal Aveline, elected new president of the Conference of Bishops of France

The result was expected: Archbishop of Marseille, Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline was elected president of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF) on Wednesday April 2, 2025. He was brought to this post by the other bishops of France, gathered in Lourdes for their plenary assembly of spring. The mandate of Cardinal Aveline will last three years, renewable once, and will start on July 1.

This election does not constitute a surprise, as the Cardinal Marseillais was in Ultra-Favori to succeed Mgr Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, who was at the conduct of the CEF since 2019. His mandate was marked by the delivery of the independent commission on sexual abuse in the church (CIASE) in November 2021, which had highlighted the extent of pedocrime ecclesial.

Now at the head of the CEF, Cardinal Aveline will therefore have to continue the work to fight against these cases and for their transparency management, in particular with the independent national recognition and repair body (INSIRR). By becoming president of the episcopal conference, Cardinal Aveline will also become a privileged interlocutor of French public authorities and should thus be brought to bring the voice of the bishops when he considers it necessary. This could soon be the case with the examination, mid-May in the National Assembly, of a bill to legalize active aid to die.

Aged 66, Cardinal Aveline gradually imposed himself as an essential figure of the French episcopate, since his appointment at the head of the Marseille diocese – his original diocese – in 2019. Three years later, Pope Francis created him Cardinal. Jean-Marc Aveline then became the first chief of a French diocese to receive the red bar from the hands of the Argentinian Pope.

At the origin of François’s visit to Marseille

But it was still a year later that Jean-Marc Aveline became truly known to the Grand Public: in September 2023, he organized a visit to Pope Francis in the Marseille city, to close the Mediterranean meetings. This displacement of the sovereign pontiff is widely seen as popular success, in particular the celebration of the closing mass in the emblematic Vélodrome stadium.

If Cardinal Aveline succeeds the conduct of the head of the CEF to Mgr Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, archbishop of Reims, the predecessor of the latter was already a archbishop of Marseille: Mgr Georges Pontier, president of the CEF from 2013 to 2019.