The resignation of George Tenet as director of the CIA provided a great moment of television, thought Dominique Dhombres of Le Monde, as George Bush dropped the bombshell, then hopped on a plane for Rome without answering a single question.
"He had an urgent meeting with the Pope and Berlusconi, not to mention the queen of England, Blair, Chirac, Putin and Schröder, who were waiting for him on the landing beaches. It was a masterful swerve. George Tenet had been offering his resignation for nearly a year. And suddenly it had become very urgent to accept it." Dhombres was less than convinced by Tenet's tearful announcement that he was resigning for "family reasons". "Appointed by Bill Clinton in 1997, George Tenet rallied, body and soul, to George Bush. He is going before the reports on September 11th and Iraq, devastating for the CIA, are made public. He is rendering to George Bush the ultimate service of quitting at the right time . . .
"Someone must carry the can for the mistakes made. So it will be him.
"Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush are apparently angels. For how long?" It was clear that Pope John Paul didn't quite regard Bush as an angel, though the President did garner some brownie points for US humanitarian action in Africa and "respect for life and the family".
On the big issues, however, as La Repubblica reported, the Pope was quite clear about his concerns while couching them in traditional diplomatic language. On the Middle East and Iraq, Bush was told, "you are very familiar with the unequivocal position of the Holy See, expressed in numerous documents, through direct and indirect contacts". On Israel/ Palestine there was a demand for "a sincere and determined commitment to dialogue", and while Abu Ghraib was not mentioned by name what else could this be about? "In the past few weeks other deplorable events have come to light which have troubled the civic and religious conscience of all, and made more difficult a serene and resolute commitment to shared human values: in the absence of such a commitment neither war nor terrorism will ever be overcome."
Spain marked during the week the passing of an entire year without a single ETA killing. "ETA now has more prisoners than ever in France and Spain (more than 600)," wrote El País. "The effectiveness of its units, in spite of its renewed murderous intentions - never have so many people, social groups and institutions been targets - has been nil in the last year . . .
"Not a single death. The kale borroka (street violence) has gone from the level of 1996 (1,113 acts of sabotage) to 102 in the last year. In October of 2003 and in April of this year there wasn't a single act of street violence." For El Mundo ETA's current weakness was proof that it could in fact be dealt with by a combination of police and repressive measures, as former prime minister Aznar had insisted but others had doubted. This did not, however, mean it was time for celebrations, for it was not difficult to explode a car bomb or shoot someone who had no police protection. Yet while ETA might wish to show that it could keep on killing, there was no doubt that it was now severely depleted, the result of a policy of police, political, diplomatic and social pressure which must, said El Mundo, be sustained.
With the Bloomsday centenary approaching, Le Figaro devoted two pages of its literary supplement to celebrating the commissioning of a new French translation of Ulysses, the first since 1929. Eminent Joycean Jacques Aubert was chosen by the writer's grandson, Stephen Joyce, to co-ordinate the translation work, in which various sections of the great book have been farmed out for separate individuals, themselves mostly writers, to work on.
Joyce has never been more popular in France, a popularity that is surely merited, though some of it has been attributed to literary snobbery.
Figaro quoted the words of Maurice Girodias: "What does it matter that his work, for the average reader, is unreadable? That just makes it even more prized by those who like to think they have cracked it."