France prepares for Pope Leo XIV's four-day visit

France is gripped by "Pope fever." Since the 1905 French law on separating church and state, the country has embraced secular traditions. But over the next few days, the streets will tell a different story.

From Friday, Pope Leo XIV will spend four days in France, visiting the capital Paris, Lourdes and Metz. All his public events have been sold out for weeks. Organizers expect around one million people to fill the streets of Paris on Saturday for a massive open-air mass at the Place de la Concorde.

"The pope is popular among both believers and nonbelievers," political scientist Olivier Roy told DW. He added that Leo XIV's conflict with US President Donald Trump in particular had lent him "a moral standing that extends far beyond the Catholic Church."

Paris gears up for influx

And massive crowds are expected. Some 600,000 people who were able to get tickets will fill the entire Champs-Elysees, going right up to the Arc de Triomphe. Many more are expected to show up without tickets. Authorities have announced that a number of metro stations will be closed. Across the city, churches have been draped with large portraits of the pope and Vatican flags. Security forces are gearing up for a major challenge.

With France's presidential elections just over six months away, the visit comes at a delicate time. The left, Roy said, "appreciates Leo's personality but is skeptical about the state's involvement in organizing the reception."

Those on the far right, he continued, welcomed the visibility of Catholicism but had objected, for example, to an interfaith meeting planned in the eastern city of Metz, which they say places Islam on an equal footing with Christianity.

Because of the separation of church and state, the president will not be able to attend the large public masses.

Leo's visit is likely to boost the pope's profile in the country, which last saw a papal state visit in 2008, when Benedict XVI (2005-2013) traveled to Paris and Lourdes, the world-famous pilgrimage site in the southwest of the country. He drew smaller crowds than those expected for Pope Leo.

Pope Francis (2013-2025) visited Strasbourg in 2014 and Ajaccio in Corsica in 2024 on one-day trips, and in 2023 he spent a night in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille. But each time, he came for a specific occasion rather than visiting the country as a whole. In his speeches to the European Parliament and Council of Europe in Strasbourg, he criticized the migration policies of what he described as an "aged and weary" Europe.

Roy described the contrasting perspectives of recent popes. John Paul II (1978-2005), he said, viewed Christianity as "primarily European," while Francis saw it as "more shaped by the Global South."

This, Roy argued, explained Francis' "certain disregard for Europe." Leo was likely to assume the middle ground, while extending his predecessor's message, Roy said: "He affirms the universality of the Catholic Church, while also recognizing Europe's weight within that universality."

Europe's key role for the pope

For Augsburg-based church historian and papal expert Jörg Ernesti, Europe has remained "the most important political point of reference for popes since the late 19th century," despite the growing internationalism of Catholicism Ernesti pointed to the demographic shift: In 1900, more than two-thirds of all Catholics lived in Europe, he said; today, the figure is only around 20%. This internationalization had also shaped the College of Cardinals, albeit with a time lag. "While Europeans have historically always made up the majority, they now account for just 39%."

During his four-day visit, Leo is scheduled to deliver 15 speeches and homilies. Most of those in Paris will be aimed at wider French society and its political leaders, while the large masses and events in Lourdes will focus primarily on France's Catholics.

The most keenly awaited speech is one scheduled for the final day in Metz, which French President Emmanuel Macron will introduce. It is titled "To the roots of Europe for peace and unity."

The choice of Metz itself is symbolic. Once a center of the Carolingian Empire, the city has changed language and allegiance several times over the centuries, at times being German, at others French.

Leo will be able to invoke the name behind the Robert Schuman Convention Center. Born in Luxembourg, Robert Schuman (1886-1963) was a French statesman who had inherited his father's German citizenship at birth. In the aftermath of World War II, he was an early advocate of Franco-German reconciliation. He pushed for a new, united Europe and in 1958 became the first president of the newly established European Parliament. After his death, he was buried in a small church in Scy-Chazelles, near Metz.

For Pope Leo, Roy said, "Europe is a real entity that must be sustained and developed beyond nationalism." That, he said, "has always been the message of the Catholic Church since World War II. It is Schuman's message."

Roy will be watching closely to see whether, and how openly, Pope Leo criticizes populism and nationalism in his call to strengthen the EU and whether he will speak about a form of nationalist Catholicism found in France. He said that defenders of the traditional Latin Mass were not infrequently "identitarian nationalists or even close to far right circles."

Leo to meet abuse survivors

It is hard to imagine a papal trip without mention of the long-running issue of abuse. When Pope Benedict visited France in 2008, he did not take the chance to meet any survivors of sexual abuse in the French Catholic Church. His successors did, though the institution has been slow to confront its past amid a spate of new scandals.

This time round, a meeting with survivors is on the pope's agenda in Lourdes. But something else has changed. During the pontificates of Benedict and Francis, those who met with them were usually not named. At times, it appeared that access to the Vatican came in exchange for silence. In France, the seven survivors who will meet Leo have spoken out together ahead of the meeting, with five of them also making their names public.

"Dialogue does not mean approval," they said. "Being received does not mean giving up our demands." The issue is likely to remain a thorny challenge for the Catholic Church — in France and elsewhere for a long time to come.