Pope Leo XIV embarks on a four-day visit to France on Friday, with the highpoint being a giant Mass attended by more than half a million people in central Paris.
For Saturday’s afternoon celebration, an altar has been built on the Place de la Concorde, and police have sealed off a large area around the Champs-Élysées.
Some 600,000 Catholic faithful are expected to cram the avenue up to the Arc de Triomphe and beyond.
Large crowds are also expected at other stages of the Pope’s itinerary, reflecting an enthusiasm the Church attributes to growing spiritual thirst among the French and other Europeans.
President Emmanuel Macron will greet the Pope at Orly airport on Friday morning, and then hold talks with him at the Élysée Palace on geopolitical issues and artificial intelligence (AI). He will also deliver a speech with the Pope in Metz.
However, the president will not be at any of the Pope’s Masses, largely to avoid breaching France’s strict separation of state and religion.
Instead, his wife Brigitte and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu will attend the Champs-Élysées Mass. Several candidates for next year’s presidential election are also due, including Marine Le Pen of the nationalist right, centrists Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal, and conservative Bruno Retailleau.
There were reports of tensions between Macron and the Vatican team sent to make arrangements, with the president allegedly frustrated in his wish for a more ceremonial aspect to the visit.
This was dismissed this week by Élysée officials, who said it was customary to offer a visiting head of state – which the Pope is – a range of high-profile events, such as a cavalry escort down the Champs-Élysées. But they said they never expected the Pope to take the offer up.
They did confirm that Pope Leo turned down Macron’s idea of a meeting with artisans who helped rebuild the fire-devastated Notre-Dame cathedral. They said his agenda was too tight.
After a Popemobile ride through crowds to Notre-Dame Cathedral on Friday afternoon, Pope Leo XIV will be joined in the evening by 80,000 young people at the Stade de France in northern Paris.
On Sunday 150,000 have signed up to attend mass in the Pyrenean sanctuary of Lourdes.
On Monday the Pope will be in Metz, in northeast France, where he will pay tribute to Robert Schuman (1886-1963), a founding father of the European Union and a fervent Catholic who is today a candidate for beatification.
The Pope will also meet a group of migrants in Paris, and in Lourdes some victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.
Born in Chicago in 1955, Pope Leo XIV was originally called Robert Prevost – a French name.
In fact his paternal grandmother was born in Le Havre in Normandy in 1894. When she married in the US many years later, she and her Italian husband took the name Prevost, her mother’s maiden name.
France has a historically complex relationship with the Catholic Church of Rome. The country was long known as the “Eldest Daughter of the Church” because, supposedly but inaccurately, it was the first kingdom to convert to Christianity. Actually, Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia preceded it.
In the 14th century, the papacy came into exile in Avignon in southern France, and over the following centuries French armies periodically intervened in Italian politics, where popes were secular rulers as well as heads of the Church.
Napoleon held two popes in captivity.
Recent popes have all come to France, most notably John-Paul II, who came several times between 1980 and 2004, and Pope Francis who came three times, but avoided Paris, going instead to Strasbourg, Marseilles and Corsica.
Today France has secularised with the rest of Europe, and less than half of the population identifies as Catholic.
The number of regular worshippers has fallen from 35% of the population in 1960 to less than 5% today, while the number of priests has shrunk by two-thirds from 25,000 in 1990 to fewer than 9,000.
But in recent years there have been signs of a growing interest in religious tradition, with the number of adult baptisms more than doubling in five years to hit 10,000 in 2025.
“France has indeed secularised, but there is a void where God and values used to be,” said Cardinal François Bustillo, Bishop of Ajaccio.
“People are searching for something. Maybe they go to India or Tibet or the Amazon. And now the Pope comes here from Rome, bringing a reminder to people of their own roots.
“It was John-Paul II who awoke the East. Now Leo XIV will awake the West,” he said.
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