Pope Leo XIV begins his first visit to France on Friday, arriving in a country where Catholicism is no longer the dominant religion but where the Church is seeing signs of renewed interest among young people in particular. But analysts caution that rising adult baptisms and large crowds of young Catholics do not necessarily amount to a wider Catholic revival.
Even before Leo has set foot on French soil, his smiling face is appearing on newsstands.
He adorns the cover of this week’s Paris Match magazine, pointing a friendly finger under a headline describing him as the pope who wants to win over France.
The weekly reports that 800,000 people have signed up to meet, greet or simply listen to him – whether at the Stade de France north of Paris on Friday or at mass on the Champs-Elysées on Saturday.
France is not an obvious choice for the head of the Catholic Church and its estimated 1.4 billion faithful.
Less than a third of the population now describe themselves as Catholic and only around 5 percent say they are practising. Infant baptism, once the norm, has become the exception.
Meanwhile, around half of the population say they have no religious affiliation.
But it is precisely France's secular model of laïcité – which separates religion and state while ensuring equal treatment of all religions – that makes it an interesting port of call.
Testing ground
"The Catholic Church in France is a kind of laboratory of some major trends that we begin to see at European level, and perhaps throughout the West," says François Mabille, head of the Geopolitical Observatory of Religion at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (Iris) in Paris.
"If you look at the long-term evolution in France, we live in a secular society. It means that for three, four, five decades, we can observe a very important decline in terms of religious marriage, belonging and the number of priests and seminarians."
There were just over 80 priestly ordinations in France this year, while around 3,000 foreign priests are working in the country – about 2,400 of them from Africa.
Mabille says the Catholic Church overall is facing "more than a crisis".
"The Catholic Church in France is a weak church with no more social or political influence in French society," he notes, pointing to recently approved legislation authorising assisted dying in certain cases.
Earlier this year, France also enshrined the right to abortion into the constitution.
The way laws are changing to reflect shifting values shows "some contradiction between this evolution and what the Catholic Church would like to impose", Mabille says.
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Adult baptisms on the rise
While French Catholicism is in decline overall, there are signs of renewed interest among young people.
About 20,000 adults and adolescents have been baptised this year so far and the figure is expected to reach 26,000 by December, continuing a rise that began in 2021.
Mabille describes the trend as a "slight rebound or awakening", but says its significance remains unclear.
The uptick began on the back of the Covid pandemic – a period that also saw an increase in mental health issues.
Ewen, a young man recently baptised, and whose mother is Muslim and whose father's family is atheist, told RFI that his faith in Jesus grew after experiencing difficulties.
"I was going to mass, but I felt that something was missing for me to really be part of the Christian family," he says. "So two years ago, I took the plunge and asked to be baptised."
Mabille says a search for meaning in life is one of many reasons that explain adult baptisms. For others, the Church can provide support and stability in times of grief.
"I was baptised in April after my grandmother died. We were very close," says 24-year-old Miteki Requin. She described feeling a sense of comfort that she would one day join her Catholic grandmother "in paradise".
Catholic by choice
The increase in adult baptisms has to be seen alongside the continuing fall in infant baptisms, Mabille says. In the early 1960s, about 90 percent of children were baptised after birth. The figure is now around 20 percent.
Together, the two trends point to a fundamental change in how people become Catholic.
"Catholicism is no more inherited, but it's now a deliberate addition to Catholicism when you are an adult," Mabille says. "So it's a big change in terms of belonging and coming to the Church."
Many of the people now entering the Church have little or no Catholic background. A 2025 survey found that about 40 percent of people converting to Catholicism came from atheist or agnostic families, while 30 percent came from families with a culturally Catholic background. About 11 percent came from other religions, most of them Muslim.
The Church, Mabille says, will have to adapt to people who choose Catholicism as adults rather than inherit it from their families.
"The global pastoral organisation of the Catholic Church in France will have to change. But we don't know for the moment in which ways."
Faith on show
The Church is becoming what sociologist Yann Raison du Cleuziou calls a "minority in transition", with older generations still heavily represented while younger Catholics form a minority both within their own age group and within the Church.
Young Catholics are therefore likely to experience their faith differently from older generations, he told RFI, and to see Catholicism as an identity that needs to be openly expressed, rather than a shared cultural norm.
"As soon as this identity becomes a minority identity, we see young Catholics, particularly during Lent, displaying a way of observing Lent that looks remarkably like the way Ramadan is observed," says Raison du Cleuziou. "There really is a desire to show that they exist."
Mabille also noted there could be "a kind of competition or rivalry with what we see in Islam", where young Muslims are more open about celebrating their religion publicly and on social media.
"If you see the major trends for Islam in France, there is a very good transmission of faith from one generation to the other generation," he noted.
‘Springtime’ for the Church
The Pope's meeting with 80,000 young people at the Stade de France on Friday will provide one of the most visible manifestations of this new generation of Catholics.
But Mabille says it’s not yet clear what motivates young people's interest – whether they want to see Leo because he is the head of the Catholic Church, or because he is a spiritual leader with a broader message.
"It’s an event which is very difficult to understand," Mabille says. "There will be a kind of rivalry between several interpretations and meanings."
Some French bishops may emphasise the apparent rejuvenation of Catholicism, while others may focus on Leo's messages about peace and Europe, he says.
Sociologist Céline Béraud says French Catholics had reacted very positively to Leo's decision to visit after years of crises, including the Covid pandemic and the continuing impact of sexual abuse scandals.
French Catholic leaders, she says, were looking for signs of "a springtime of the Church in France".
The Church will spend an estimated €27 million on the trip, including about €20 million for the Diocese of Paris alone, Mabille says. The French state will pay for security while the Church covers the wider cost.
But whether it gets a return on that investment is far from certain.
Papal precedent
Mabille pointed to Leo's recent visit to Spain as a warning against assuming that a major papal event will produce lasting political effects.
While Leo received a lengthy standing ovation in the Spanish parliament after speaking about democracy and national unity, "the impact of his speech was really tiny", noted the researcher. Just days later, Spanish political parties were deeply divided over an issue involving Moroccan migrants in Ceuta.
"So this hope that Pope Leo could help to unify French society or the French political situation, it's not very realistic," Mabille says.
He is similarly cautious over the idea that Friday evening’s massive youth gathering necessarily marks a Catholic revival.
While John Paul II's visit to France in 1997 also drew large crowds of young people there was no clear evidence that it created a lasting "John Paul II generation" or changed the direction of French Catholicism, he says.
"There is a risk of overestimation of this visit to France," he says. "The structural trends, secularisation, are more important than just the coming of a Pope.
"There is probably a gap between what the French bishops expect and what the reality will show in a few weeks, months and years."
