When paparazzi caught French President François Hollande emerging from an alleged tryst with a woman who was not the First Lady, he called Jean-Pierre Mignard for help. The President was already facing discontent from Catholic voters over the legalisation on gay marriage and Mignard advised him to seek an audience with Pope Francis. This rare Catholic activist in Hollande’s entourage is the man the French leader turns to when he is in a fix. Mignard, a star Paris barrister, has helped Hollande navigate minefields for decades. He is godfather to two of the secularist President’s four children with his one-time partner Ségolène Royal, whom Hollande left in 2007 for the journalist Valérie Trierweiler. Although allied politically with Royal, Mignard, 62