The Archbishop of Paris, André Vingt-Trois, has been elected the chairman of the French Bishops' Conference just weeks before he is to receive his cardinal's red hat, writes Tom Heneghan.

His mentor, the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, was never chosen to lead the country's bishops. The election at the bishops' autumn meeting in Lourdes broke the unwritten rule that a candidate should first serve as one of the conference's two vice-chairmen. The chairman's term is for three years and can be renewed once.

The archbishop promised to continue in the footsteps of his predecessor, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the Archbishop of Bordeaux. "If you're looking for a break in policy, go somewhere else," he told journalists - a reference to the "break" President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised in French politics. Archbishop Vingt-Trois, 65, said his job was to spread the Gospel. "We are in a society that is largely areligious," he said. "Many no longer have any memory of Christianity." He urged the faithful "to pick up a phrase from the gospels and ask how they can put it into practice around them".