Pope Leo XIV arrived in France on Friday, September 25, for a four-day apostolic visit that will take him from Paris to the Pyrenean pilgrimage site of Lourdes and on to Metz, a city in northeastern France on the German border. The visit — the first official papal trip to France in nearly 20 years — comes as the Catholic Church seeks to rebuild its standing after abuse scandals and as Leo presses world leaders for global rules on artificial intelligence.
President Emmanuel Macron greeted the Pope at Orly airport on Friday morning before hosting talks at the Élysée Palace covering geopolitical issues and AI regulation. Pope Leo then addressed staff at UNESCO's Paris headquarters — an institution facing significant budget shortfalls following the United States' withdrawal from the agency in 2025 — before a Popemobile procession through central Paris to Notre-Dame cathedral, the Gothic masterpiece restored after a devastating fire in 2019. The evening included a prayer vigil with some 80,000 young people at the Stade de France in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis. Saturday's centrepiece is an outdoor Mass on the Place de la Concorde, with an altar erected near the iconic square and the surrounding area, including the Champs-Élysées stretching toward the Arc de Triomphe, sealed off for the occasion. Around 600,000 Catholic faithful are expected to attend. France's strict constitutional separation of church and state means Macron will not be present at any of the papal Masses, though his wife Brigitte and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will attend Saturday's celebration, along with several candidates for next year's presidential election.
The visit carries a heavy pastoral and social agenda. On Sunday in Lourdes — a sanctuary in the Pyrenees that draws millions of Catholic pilgrims each year — Leo will meet privately with seven survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. A landmark 2021 report found that some 330,000 children in France had been abused by Catholic clergy and lay leaders over seven decades, and survivors continue to press the Church for deeper accountability. The Pope also visited the Maison Bakhita, a Parisian diocesan centre for migrants and displaced people, on Saturday morning. The tour concludes on Monday in Metz, where Leo will pay tribute to Robert Schuman (1886–1963), a founding father of the European Union and devout Catholic who is a candidate for beatification, and deliver a speech on "the roots of Europe for peace and unity." Macron invited all 27 EU heads of state, though attendance remains uncertain.
The visit has also brought logistical and financial pressures into sharp relief. The French Church estimates the total cost at 27 million euros, with the Vatican leaving financing to the host country's Church rather than contributing directly. While the Lourdes and Metz legs are fully funded, some 18 million euros remain unraised for the Paris stage alone. The Church is relying on merchandise sales, corporate sponsorship, and donations from the faithful — with contributions eligible for a 66% tax deduction — to close the gap. Security costs, borne by the French state, remain undisclosed.
The scale of public interest reflects a broader, if complex, religious shift in France, a country long described as the "Eldest Daughter of the Church" due to its historically deep Catholic identity. Regular Mass attendance has fallen from 35% of the population in 1960 to under 5% today, and the number of priests has shrunk by two-thirds since 1990. Yet adult baptisms have more than doubled in five years, reaching 10,000 in 2025, and over 21,000 people were baptised at Easter 2026 — three times the figure from a decade ago. Many young French Catholics describe seeking not only a relationship with God but also community, meaning, and hope in an anxious world. "People are searching for something," said Cardinal François Bustillo, Bishop of Ajaccio. "Now the Pope comes here from Rome, bringing a reminder to people of their own roots."