Pope Leo XIV seemed to hit his stride today in his high-profile visit to France, visiting a welcome center for migrants and survivors of human trafficking before speaking to a group of catechumens, new Catholics and members of a synodal assembly tasked with responding to France’s 400 percent jump in baptisms since the Covid-19 pandemic.
The highlight of the day, though, was a popemobile ride down the Champs-Élysées followed by a massive outdoor Mass at the Place de la Concorde; the two events drew some 800,000 people. Finally, the pope flew to the countryside town of Lourdes in the foothills of the Pyrenees in southwestern France, where residents and pilgrims lined the city’s main street to catch a glimpse of the pope. The evening ended with a prayer at the Grotto of the Apparitions at Massabielle in Lourdes.
Yesterday, Pope Leo seemed to come alive once his political obligations had been met in the morning; he appeared happier and more at ease throughout the day today, and his messages focused on the vocation of French Catholics in a secular society, with a particular emphasis on prayer and devotion aimed at inspiring Catholics to evangelize and work for justice.
Although Leo criticized some French government policies yesterday, like the nation’s recent assisted suicide bill, he also warned his young, Catholic listeners against becoming entrenched in “culture wars” even as far-right politicians like Marine Le Pen, who currently leads the polls for next year’s French presidential elections, have warned for decades that immigration from majority-Muslim countries presents an existential risk to French culture, particularly the country’s official commitment to a culture of secularism known as laïcité.
Yesterday, speaking to France’s Catholics, Pope Leo spoke about the rich religious history of the country, including its many famous saints. At an evening youth vigil at the Stade de France, young people dressed as those saints placed their hands on the shoulders of other young people attending as Pope Leo, moved with emotion, told them, “You are the saints of France!”
Nicolas Cailleau, who brought his six children to see the pope in Lourdes this evening, described the pope’s political speeches yesterday as “putting things back into perspective a little when it comes to laicite. Being in a secular country doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be able to practice your religion or show your faith publicly.”
The pope’s audience this morning at the Institut Catholique de Paris included catechumens and newly-baptized Catholics; anecdotally, many young converts in France have described being inspired by their Muslim peers’ expressions of faith, and are more comfortable with religious expression in public spaces than older generations.
Nicolas Plesdin, 19, who was sitting on a metal barricade before the pope’s Mass, said, “We didn’t grow up in the same kind of world, so we don’t necessarily have the same outlook the previous generation had.”
“Are we more open [to public religious expressions]? I don’t know. But we try to discover as many things as possible, and we have the tools to do that, whether digital tools or others,” he said. Many young converts cited using the internet to learn more about their faith in a survey conducted by the French bishops; a catechumen who spoke at the pope’s meeting this morning said he had turned to the internet to learn about Catholicism because he was worried he might not be accepted in an in-person community on account of his “Maghrebain” (North African) appearance.
Speaking to the ethnically diverse group of converts, those in the process of converting and the synodal assembly at the Institut Catholique, Pope Leo emphasized that, as the French bishops have reported, people are seeking out Catholicism in France due to “a simple spiritual thirst, a search for meaning, and an attraction to the Gospel, while others arrive burdened by painful experiences, situations of loneliness, and profound difficulties.”
Willan Printemps, 27, who has accompanied catechumens in the Diocese of Saint-Denis for the last five years, said many of the catechumens he accompanies seek out the church because they are searching for meaning. “First of all, it’s a call from Christ,” he said, then added, “Faced with everything happening in the world—in terms of horror, war, things we can’t understand—I think people are looking for meaning, and they find it in the church.”
Mr. Printemps said most of his catechumens are high school and college students, and that the majority of young people in his neighborhood are Muslim. For those exploring Catholicism, then, “I think there is a search for identity—a desire to know who you are and what you believe.”
Along with other members of his diocese, Mr. Printemps wore a patterned scarf, evocative of the purple scarves that French catechumens traditionally wear to Mass and church events so that others know to welcome them.
Pope Leo stressed, however, as did one newly-baptized speaker at the event, that formation and accompaniment cannot stop at the moment of baptism, but that new Catholics need to be integrated into church communities. This is a pressing pastoral issue, and one the pope may address further when he speaks to the French bishops in Lourdes tomorrow.
The pope was clearly at ease during the visit, which was held at the Institut Catholique de Paris. The institute, a former Carmelite convent, has a personal connection for Pope Leo, as it was where Brother Lawrence, author of one of Leo’s favorite books, The Practice of the Presence of God, lived. Another of the pope’s spiritual inspirations, Chrétien de Chergé, O.C.S.O., a Cistercian priest who was murdered by an Islamic terrorist group in Algeria in 1996, also studied here: It is from de Chergé that Leo borrowed his often-used phrase, “a disarmed and disarming peace.”
Speaking about how to accompany new converts, Pope Leo echoed the words of Pope Francis, saying that Catholics are called to emulate “God’s own way of acting, which is characterized by closeness, compassion and tenderness.” He pointed to the Second Vatican Council as a moment of renewal of the catechumenate that produced resources that remain helpful today. And for the second time in two days, he cited Vatican II in connection with the liturgy, subtly pushing back on the liturgical traditionalism present in some communities in France.
The pope warned strongly against becoming “complacent or naively optimistic” when faced with France’s unexpected wave of new conversions, even “as we marvel at what is taking place in the lives of so many of our brothers and sisters.” He urged them to welcome the phenomenon “with a spirit of responsibility.”
This afternoon at the pope’s Mass at the Place de la Concorde—the location where King Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette were beheaded, and thus one of the birthplaces of the secular French Republic—Pope Leo returned to the theme of spiritual “thirst” that he had used at the Institut Catholique de Paris that morning, describing it as a fundamental “thirst for meaning, for truth and fulfillment.”
In a place marked by the violence of the French Revolution—much like the Institut Catholique, where the pope prayed at the simple engraving (“Here they fell”) marking the place where 115 clerics and bishops were killed—the pope urged Catholics to evangelize the country, saying, “You who are heirs to France’s long and beautiful history of faith…you thirst for God, for life, for truth, for unity, for peace, for communion and for happiness. You long to rediscover a horizon filled with light and to build a renewed nation upon roots nourished by faith. Do not keep this faith in Jesus Christ to yourselves.”
In his final wish to the young Catholics of Paris, he said, “May you bear witness to those around you to the journey you are making, and inspire them to ask themselves questions as well.”
Nevae Bludo, 15, who was baptized a year ago, came to the pope’s Mass from the Diocese of Troyes. Asked why she became Catholic, she said, “I don’t know. At the moment, I don’t know if I can believe it or not, and…” she trailed off, before adding, “It’s something real.”
The day’s other events pointed to the image of a church that goes out to the margins that Pope Leo laid out in part at yesterday’s vespers service at Notre-Dame. At the Maison Bakhita, the pope listened to testimonies from migrants and a victim of human trafficking and urged his audience to remember, “No one is so poor as to have nothing to give; no one is so rich as to have nothing to receive.”
As he proceeded through the Place de la Concorde in the popemobile before Mass, a young man with physical disabilities was hoisted up in his wheelchair by the surrounding crowd; the pope leaned out of the vehicle and traced the sign of the cross on the young man’s forehead. The moment circulated widely online during the visit, as did another video of a young man with Down syndrome explaining that he had been chosen as an altar server for the pope’s Mass, alongside a statistic saying that 68 percent of pregnancies diagnosed prenatally with Down’s syndrome are aborted.
At Lourdes this evening, Pope Leo’s plane from Paris landed at sunset; a line of elderly people in wheelchairs and others waited at the edge of the tarmac. After a brief greeting, Leo continued to the remote town, where people lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the pope.
Mr. Cailleau, who with his wife Marie-Adélaïde, brought their six children from Limoges by car to see the pope, explained that his son Barthélémy had been in the hospital the day Pope Leo XIV was elected. Barthélémy, age 2, has brittle bone disease and had fallen down, suffering a head injury the day white smoke came up over the Sistine Chapel.
“We came to pray for Barthélémy’s healing. And for Zita [their daughter] as well, who has an illness,” Mr. Cailleau said.
Asked what he hoped for from the pope’s visit to Lourdes, Mr. Cailleau said, “I hope he’ll give us a message of hope for France. Already, his theme, ‘So that the world may have life,’ gives a lot of hope for our country, I think. It’s true that there are fewer and fewer Catholics, and sometimes it becomes difficult to show your faith because of laïcité. So we hope that we’ll be able to be freer in that sense and encourage other people to follow Jesus.”
The pope’s visit continues tomorrow in Lourdes with an address to the French bishops, an outdoor Mass, a visit to a care center for Lourdes pilgrims with intensive medical needs, a visit to a Carmelite monstery, a highly-anticipated meeting with sexual abuse survivors and a torchlight Rosary and procession, all of which seem to be aimed at delivering a message of healing.
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