French press review 30 April 2011

The royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in London on Friday dominates Saturday’s French papers with the main tabloids vying for superlatives to describe the biggest royal event of our generation. – “Majestic”  says Le Figaro, “Royal”, France Soir, “Buckingham parade”, Libération and “What a kiss !”, Aujourd’hui en France/Le Parisien.

Le Figaro publishes a photograph of the just-married couple backed by a colourful four-page coverage of the event, from the star-studded church ceremony at Westminster Abbey, to the traditional balcony appearance at Buckingham Palace.

Aujourd’hui en France/Le Parisien picks out the heart-throbbing exchange of vows by Kate Middleton and Prince William as the ultimate moment.

The ritual was witnessed from the benches of Westminster by 1,900 guests, one million fans outside the Abbey and some two billion people watching on television around the world, according to the popular newspaper.

In the build-up to the royal wedding some tabloids saw the glittering ceremony as a distraction to Britons who face huge job losses amid the deepest public spending cuts for decades.

Libération was one of them and surprisingly the tone is rather muted today. Libé holds that the marriage will boost the standing of the royal family with its subjects after the traumas of the past generation.

The royals are still struggling to put a string of public controversies and marriage breakdowns - including that of William's parents Prince Charles and the late princess Diana - behind them.

Libération refers to a recent study published by the left-leaning Guardian showing that up 63 per cent of Britons aren’t convinced their country will fair better without the monarchy.

The terrorist attack last Thursday in Morocco also continues to receive wide coverage.

Le Monde updates the death toll now up to 16 and counting including six French citizens. Libération reports that investigators in Marrakesh now know that the explosive device was detonated by remote control.

Le Figaro states that the authorities are eyeing Al-Qaeda as the suspected mastermind of the deadly attack that has thrown Morocco into a stake of shock.

Le Monde comments in an editorial that the Marrakesh attacks constitute a warning to European countries obsessed by questions of immigration and security.

The newspaper argues that failure to back the democratic uprising underway in the Arab world would only bolster autocratic regimes there, handing terrorist groups ample justification to continue their campaign of bloodletting and violence.

The breaking scandal of discriminatory quotas at the French Football Federation makes the front pages in three leading newspapers..

France Football headlines on the allegations by the respected online journal Médiapart that federation officials have set up a system of quotas for white players.

Libération has a picture of a black-washed Laurent Blanc splashed across the cover page with a caption “French football -Black carded? Blanc denies ever being part of the scheme.

Libé urges French football chiefs to come clean about its youth training policy.

Le Figaro reports that FFF president Fernand Duchaussoy has launched an internal probe on the matter which would constitute a violation of the French constitution, if proven.

Notwithstanding the outcome of the inquiry, the conservative newspaper regrets the Federation’s inability to come out of the moral crisis in which the national football team has been plunged since the failed 2010 world cup campaign in South Africa.

There is a special edition of the Catholic daily La Croix in the kiosks today as it looks ahead to Sunday’s beatification of the late Pope John Paul II.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have been flocking to Saint Peter’s Square in Rome to see the remains of the Polish Pope who died six years ago after 27 years at the helm of the church.

La Croix holds that despite the polemics raised about his disastrous management of the paedophile scandal in the church, history will be lenient to him over time.

What’s being celebrated this Sunday, according to the newspaper, is John Paul II, the man who, by the shear warmth of his look and the power of his words, accompanied his contemporaries beyond the limits of the horizon.