Pope Leo XIV begins four-day visit to France

Pope Leo XIV began a four-day visit to France on Friday, September 25, with a meeting with President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace among the first engagements on his agenda.

The September 25-28 trip is Leo’s first official papal visit to France since he was elected head of the Catholic Church last year. It is also the first official papal state visit to France since Pope Benedict XVI visited in 2008, according to dpa.

After meeting Macron, Leo is scheduled to visit the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations agency responsible for education, science and culture. He will later attend vespers at Notre-Dame Cathedral before leading a prayer vigil for young people at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis. More than 80,000 young people are expected to attend the evening event.

On Saturday, the pope will visit the Maison Bakhita social support and integration centre in Paris and meet catechumens and newly baptised Catholics. He will then celebrate Mass at Place de la Concorde before travelling to Lourdes, a major Catholic pilgrimage destination in southwestern France.

In Lourdes, Leo is scheduled to pray at the Grotto of the Apparitions, meet French bishops and celebrate Mass at the sanctuary. He will also meet sick pilgrims and hold a private meeting with several survivors of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

The pope will conclude his visit in Metz, in northeastern France, where he is scheduled to attend an interreligious meeting and a gathering focused on Europe’s roots, peace and unity. He will also celebrate Mass at the Cathedral of Saint Stephen before returning to Rome on September 28.

The visit comes amid tensions between France’s strongly secular political system and some positions of the Catholic Church. The Church has criticised France’s constitutional protection of abortion rights and legislation allowing assisted dying. France has maintained a formal separation of church and state since the 1905 law establishing the principle of laïcité.

The Catholic Church in France, meanwhile, continues to face scrutiny over its handling of sexual-abuse cases. Leo’s planned meeting with survivors in Lourdes is expected to form part of the Church’s response to those concerns.

Although Catholics remain France’s largest religious group, the country has become increasingly secular, with a substantial share of its population no longer identifying with any religion. Macron is not scheduled to attend any of the pope’s Masses, reflecting France’s longstanding separation of religious and state affairs.

By Tamilla Hasanova