President Nicolas Sarkozy has broken a French taboo by urging a more active role for religion in public life, but stopped well short of the American-style mix of faith and politics his critics say he wants to copy.
A twice-divorced "cultural Catholic", Sarkozy used a visit to the Vatican on Thursday to declare France was rooted in Christianity and needed Catholics to be more active in public life because faith helped give meaning to life.
His trip to Rome, which included being inducted as honorary canon of the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, provoked charges that he was trying to blur the separation of church and state and make religion a political issue as in the United States.
In its front-page cartoon on Friday, the Paris daily Le Monde showed Sarkozy dressed as a bishop, with President George Bush shouldering a cross and an American flag and confessing to Pope Benedict: "I think this guy is stealing my job."
The Communist daily L'Humanite scoffed that Sarkozy had bowed his head to the Pope "like an altar boy" and "abandoned all reserve and placed his status as a Catholic above that of the head of a secular state."
In his speech accepting the canon's title, an honour given to French leaders since the 17th century, Sarkozy made repeated references to France's Christian roots - a link that Paris refused to have mentioned in Europe's planned constitution.
He also gave Pope Benedict a copy of his 2004 book "The Republic, Religions and Hope" in which he first spelled out his dissenting views about faith and French politics.
