Paris.- Pope Leo XIV landed this Friday at the Parisian airport of Orly to begin his four-day visit to France and UNESCO, which will also take him to the Marian shrine of Lourdes and the town of Metz.
The Holy Father was received at the plane’s stairs by an entourage led by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, with whom he will hold an initial meeting in the airfield’s VIP lounge following the protocol reception for a head of state.
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While church bells rang across the country, a group of children, with the motto of the visit, “So that the world may have life,” chanted the name of the Holy Father.
Leo XIV’s first visit to France has raised great expectation in the country, with two key moments: the meeting with young people that will take place this Friday at the Stade de France, which will be attended by 80,000 people, and the mass that he will celebrate this Saturday at the Place de la Concorde, for which more than 600,000 faithful have registered, who will fill the Champs-Élysées and several surrounding avenues.
The trip to France is part of the Pope’s desire to highlight the increase in vocations detected in that country and comes almost three years after his predecessor, Francis I, went to Marseille to participate in a conference on the Mediterranean.
“I am going to Marseille, not to France,” Francis said at the time, thus marking a distance from the French church that Leo XIV does not seem to maintain with one of the countries that attaches the most importance to secularism in the world.
Although some controversial points persist, such as sexual abuse within the French church or the advancement of the right to euthanasia in France.
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Leo XIV arrives in France
Leo XIV wanted to give an international dimension to his visit to France, but also a popular aspect largely inspired by the one he made to Spain in June.
After a meeting at the Élysée with Macron, the first stop of his trip to France, alongside whom he will deliver a speech, the Holy Father will hold a meeting with civil society and, subsequently, will move to the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), a UN agency based in Paris.
A first mass bath will follow later when Leo XIV travels in the ‘popemobile’ from the church of Notre Dame des Champs to the cathedral of Notre Dame, where he will preside over a religious service with bishops, priests, and deacons.
From there, he will move to the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis (outskirts of Paris), for the massive meeting with the young people.
In his first act on Saturday, the Holy Father will address the most social part of his trip with a visit to a support center for refugees and migrants in Paris, after which he will hold a religious meeting and the massive mass in the center of the capital, which will put an end to his Parisian stage of the trip.
In the afternoon, the Pope will travel to the Marian sanctuary of Lourdes, in southwestern France, one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Christendom, where he will follow in the footsteps of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, who also visited the place where the Catholic Church has certified 72 miracles.
On Sunday, he will hold a meeting with the country’s bishops and will officiate a mass at the sanctuary. In that city, he will receive, in a personal capacity, seven victims of abuse within the French church.
On Monday, the Pope’s visit takes on a European dimension in Metz, the land of Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of European construction, a fervent Catholic whose beatification process is underway.
Macron, who will not attend any of the Pope’s religious events, will be present for the speech that Leo XIV will deliver, to which the Élysée has invited the heads of State and Government of the 27.
A mass at the city’s cathedral and an interfaith meeting will close the Pope’s events in France, who will head to Rome at night.
