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French press review 28 February 2013

Two very different men dominate this morning's French front pages.

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Both were born in Germany. Both have been critics of many modern orthodoxies.

One passed away yesterday at the age of 95; the other retired from his public functions at the age 85. Both were clearly much loved.

We're talking, of course, about Stéphane Hessel and Joseph Ratzinger, he perhaps better known as Pope Benedict XVI.

Hessel's career, spanning two centuries, indeed, two millennia, is difficult to summarise: he fought in the French Resistance, spent time in a German concentration camp. After the war, Hessel worked at the United Nations, notably helping to draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

He was one of the driving forces in the fifty-year struggle to establish the International Criminal Court. More recently, with extraordinary energy, he became involved in various "outrage" movements, campaigning against the power of high finance and on behalf of illegal immigrants.

He is remembered by Le Monde as "A humanist".

Communist L'Humanité remarks on his capacity for intelligent indignation. And Libération calls him "One of the just," using the term Jewish survivors of the Holocaust chose to qualify those who had risked their lives to save Jews from deportation.

A determined optimist, Hessel said it was crucial to have a vision beyond what was immediately practicable. But he also warned against the "cruelty" of modern society.

He will be sadly missed.

There were lots of tears in St Peter's Square, Rome, yesterday as Pope Benedict XVI bade his final farewells to an estimated 170,000 Catholics.

The catholic daily La Croix salutes a man with the courage to stand down while he can still stand up, a man who has clearly suffered personally from the rifts and scandals which have continued to trouble the Roman Church.

The catholic paper's editorial ends with an ominous warning to Benedict's still-to-be-chosen successor: he will have to ensure the vitality of the faith of all baptised persons, he will even sometimes have to protect that faith against those whose job it is to defend it.

Tomorrow, the 117 cardinal electors will begin arriving in Rome to prepare for the election conclave, expected to open officially on 10 March. The new pope can, technically, be any baptised male, but he will certainly be chosen from among the 117 electors. The lads won't be allowed to send tweets from the conclave. Anyone breaking that rule will be excommunicated. It might make more sense to excommunicate their phones.

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