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Pope Leo XIV continues France visit with Lourdes pilgrimage after Paris open-air Mass
Pope Leo XIV celebrates open-air Mass at Place de la Concorde on day two of his four-day France visit, then heads to Lourdes — the first papal pilgrimage there since 2008.
Why it matters
This is the first papal state visit to France in 18 years and the first papal pilgrimage to Lourdes since Benedict XVI's visit in 2008. Leo XIV used the trip's political moments to weigh in on French domestic debates — chiefly the country's new assisted-dying law — while casting the visit as a broader message on peace, ethical AI and nuclear disarmament.
The scale is striking: 80,000 young people filled the Stade de France for Friday night's vigil, and Lourdes capped registration at 150,000 as the pontiff headed to the grotto of Massabielle.
Full report
Pope Leo XIV began the second day of his four-day apostolic journey to France on Saturday (Sept. 26) with visits to the Maison Bakhita social support centre in Montmartre and a meeting at the Institut Catholique de Paris, before celebrating a large open-air Mass at Place de la Concorde at 3 p.m., with arrangements extending along the Champs-Élysées.
He was scheduled to depart Paris-Orly at 5:45 p.m. for Lourdes, where his first event is evening prayer at the Grotto of Massabielle — the site where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. He is to meet French bishops, lead the rosary and Marian torchlight procession, and celebrate Mass at the shrine's meadow on Sunday, before a final day in Metz on Sept. 28.
The visit opened Friday at Paris-Orly, where President Emmanuel Macron received the pontiff, and in the evening some 80,000 young people joined Leo XIV for a vigil at the Stade de France.
At the Élysée Palace, addressing French political and civic leaders, the pope declared that "the protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right." He voiced concern about trends "that risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures promoting genetic manipulation, surrogacy, the trade in human organs or the possibility of arranging one's own death" — remarks widely read as a critique of France's new law creating a legal right to assisted dying for some terminally ill patients, enacted about two months earlier.
He also warned that without education in ethical discernment, humanity risks being lost "amid a 'paradise of machines' invading and conditioning our daily lives," called for nuclear disarmament, and invoked France's motto of liberty, equality and fraternity as "universal ethical obligations" rather than mere symbols.
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