From migration to artificial intelligence, clerical abuse and war in Europe, Pope Leo XIV’s first visit to France this weekend will touch on some of the biggest challenges facing the Catholic Church and French society alike.
Pope Leo arrives in France on Friday for a four-day state visit that will take him from Paris to Lourdes and Metz on a programme that mixes diplomacy with public worship.
No pontiff has made a state trip to France since Benedict XVI in 2008. The visit is the first by Leo, the only American pope, whose paternal grandmother was born in France.
Preparations are already well underway in central Paris, where a giant white canopy has been erected on the Place de la Concorde ahead of an open-air mass on Saturday. Around 600,000 people have signed up to attend.
The interest reflects the enduring presence of Catholicism in France, even as regular church attendance has fallen.
Only around 5 percent of France’s 69 million residents regularly attend Catholic services, according to a survey last year. France is also deeply attached to its secular model of laïcité, while recent social reforms have included enshrining abortion rights in the Constitution and approving assisted dying for some patients.
At the same time, the French Catholic Church has seen signs of renewed interest among younger adults. Infant baptisms have declined, but the number of adults choosing to be baptised has been rising.
France has become something of a testing ground for the changes affecting Catholicism across Western Europe, according to François Mabille, director of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion at French think tank the Institute for International and Strategic Affairs.
“The Catholic Church in France is a kind of laboratory for some major trends that we begin to see at European level, and perhaps throughout the West,” he told RFI, pointing as one example to the rising number of people committing to Catholicism as adults rather than inheriting it from their families.
Presidential welcome
France has been a regular destination for recent popes. John Paul II travelled to the country eight times between 1980 and 2004, while Francis made three trips during his pontificate – to Strasbourg, Marseille and Corsica – although none was a state visit.
President Emmanuel Macron will formally welcome Leo at the Elysée Palace on Friday, several months after the two met at the Vatican.
The visit comes as France prepares for a presidential election next year to choose Macron’s successor, against a backdrop of political fragmentation and support for the far right.
Leo will then travel to the headquarters of Unesco, where artificial intelligence is expected to be one of the themes of his address.
The Pope has repeatedly raised concerns over the rapid development of AI and earlier this year called for the technology to be “disarmed” to prevent it from dominating humanity.
He will later travel by popemobile to Notre-Dame Cathedral, which reopened in December 2024 following a five-year reconstruction after the devastating fire of April 2019.
On Friday evening, Leo will join tens of thousands of Catholics aged between 17 and 35 for a prayer gathering at the Stade de France stadium outside Paris.
The Pope is due to meet migrants on Saturday before celebrating mass at the Place de la Concorde, with hundreds of thousands of worshippers expected to fill the Champs-Élysées.
Meeting with abuse survivors
Leo will travel south on Sunday to Lourdes, one of the world’s best-known Catholic pilgrimage sites.
According to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared there in 1858 to Bernadette Soubirous, a 14-year-old girl from a poor local family. The grotto where the apparitions are said to have taken place has since become a major destination for pilgrims.
Leo will celebrate mass in a field near the grotto before holding a private meeting with seven survivors of clerical sexual abuse, as the Catholic Church continues to confront the legacy of abuse within its institutions and calls for accountability.
Among them will be an 80-year-old former pupil of a nearby Catholic boarding school that has been at the centre of allegations of widespread physical and sexual abuse. The participants have stressed they are taking part as individuals and do not claim to represent all victims.
The Pope’s final stop on Monday will be Metz in north-eastern France, where he will deliver an address expected to focus on peace and the future of Europe as Russia’s war against Ukraine continues into its fifth year and transatlantic relations remain strained.
EU heads of state and government have been invited to attend, according to a French presidential source.
Leo is also due to meet representatives of France’s main religious communities – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Orthodox Christian and Buddhist – who are expected to sign a joint declaration on peace by the close of his four-day visit.
(with newswires)
