President Emmanuel Macron met with Pope Francis at the Vatican yesterday. During a private audience, Macron gifted the head of the Church the first French edition of Immanuel Kant's late 18th-century book Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch. A storm has broken out over the internet about whether Emmanuel Macron accidentally or on purpose gifted Pope Francis a Polish book looted by Nazis during World War II.
When a Vatican correspondent for French newspaper Le Croix Loup Besmond de Senneville posted a photo of the inside front cover, eagled-eyed Internet users noticed a clearly identifiable stamp of the Czytelnia Akademicka, which was a reading union organised by students from the University of Lwów, which was then part of Poland.
The Czytelnia Akademicka was a Polish student society active in Lwów from 1867-1939. Between the wars, its members were mainly students of the Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów, which is now the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv.
During the war, the library was heavily looted by the Germans and the Soviets, which led to immediate speculation online that Macron had actually gifted the Pope stolen war booty, with some even accusing the French head of state of the crime of 'fencing'.