Pope Leo XIV held a mass at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, attracting about 700 thousand people

Pope Leo XIV celebrated an open-air mass at the Place de la Concorde in central Paris. According to the Vatican, about 700 thousand people came to the service, which took place on the second day of the pontiff's visit to France.

A special pavilion was erected on Place de la Concorde, one of the main ones in the French capital.

Before the service began, the head of the Catholic Church drove through the crowd along the Champs-Elysees in the Popemobile, a white SUV with an open top covered by a glass screen.

Many French politicians attended the mass, but French President Emmanuel Macron was not among them.

Macron welcomed the pope on Friday, but he will not attend any services to avoid violating France's strict principles of separation of religion and state.

However, Macron’s wife Brigitte and the country’s Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu were present at Saturday’s mass. Several politicians who could take part in next year's presidential elections also showed up, including far-right National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen, conservative Bruno Retaillo, and centrists Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal.

During the service, Leo XIV urged Catholics “not to keep the faith only for themselves” and to make it “hope where despondency and spiritual drought reign, helping to renew society without breaking away from Christian roots.”

During his sermon, he also addressed Catholic youth, calling them “the Church of today.”

On Saturday, the pope also met with migrants and volunteers during a visit to the House of Bakhita center, a refugee support organization.

At the beginning of his visit, he also warned about the dangers of the spread of artificial intelligence technologies.

During his four-day visit to France, the pope will also celebrate Mass in Lourdes, a Catholic pilgrimage center in the Pyrenees. About 150 thousand people have already registered to participate in the Sunday service.

On Monday, Pope Leo will travel to the northeastern city of Metz to pay tribute to Robert Schumann (1886-1963), one of the founding fathers of the European Union and a devout Catholic whom the church is now considering as a candidate for beatification, the first step toward canonization.

The current Pope is of French descent. He was born in the United States in 1955, and before becoming pontiff, bore the French surname Prevost.