Pope Leo XIV’s four-day trip to France Sept. 25-28 will be the first papal visit to the country since 2008, sort of.
His predecessor, Pope Francis, set foot on French soil three times during his 12-year pontificate, but he and the Vatican consistently stressed that each journey was tied to a particular city or event rather than a visit to France as a whole — so much so that a French journalist asked Francis during an airborne press conference in 2023: “Do you have something against France?”
The last pope to visit Paris was Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, who celebrated a Mass attended by some 250,000 people.
But that figure will be blown out of the water when Leo celebrates Mass in the French capital. More than 600,000 have already registered to attend papal Mass along the Champs-Élysées on Saturday and organizers said more than a million people are expected to see the pope in Paris at all of his events.
Such a shift could be indicative of the popularity of this pope or of surging enthusiasm around Catholicism in famously secular France or some combination of the two. Either way, it sets the stage for Leo to make quite the splash in France, territory long thought to be hostile to the realm of religion.
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With thanks to National Catholic Reporter and Justin McLellan, where this article originally appeared.
