Pope's visit to France: Holy Father ante portas

High visit: Pope Leo XIV is coming to France from September 25th to 28th. The program and the stations show ambition. After being welcomed by President Emmanuel Macron at Paris-Orly Airport and a meeting with heads of state at the Elysée Palace, Leo XIV wants to visit UNESCO.

He will then drive from the Notre-Dame-des-Champs church in the Popemobile along the boulevards to the Notre-Dame Cathedral to the applause of the crowd. A “meeting” with 80,000 young people is planned for the evening at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis.

The Catholic Church is currently experiencing significant growth. According to the Bishops' Conference, 21,300 adults and young people were baptized at Easter this year - three times more than four years ago. Clearly there is a societal trend towards spirituality.

The extent of French Catholics' enthusiasm for the Pope is demonstrated by the fact that in the days following the announcement of the visit program, more than 600,000 people registered for the main event, the mass on La Concorde square in Paris.

On Sunday the Pope will make a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where 200,000 believers await him. The last stop is Metz, where, after a meeting with representatives of other religions, he is supposed to comment on the importance of Europe for peace. His encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas” on the AI ​​debate also arouses great interest among many non-Catholics.

“A cathedral three kilometers long,” is how General Hervé Wattecamps describes the image at the papal mass on the Concorde, which will undoubtedly be the highlight on Saturday. The already huge square on the right bank of the Seine opposite the National Assembly must be extended along the entire length of the Avenue des Champs-Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe and beyond.

The general is the chief organizer of the four-day papal visit to France. Since more than 600,000 believers have already registered for the gigantic open-air mass, he can expect a mass rush.

This place with the so forgiving-sounding name La Concorde has left the church with more than just good memories. In the same place where Pope Leo XIV will give his blessing to those present on Saturday, the guillotine stood from 1792 to 1795. With her, first Louis XVI, later Marie-Antoinette and other representatives of the Christian Ancien Régime were beheaded in the name of an anti-clerical revolution.

Since these turmoil, the “eldest daughter of the church,” as France proudly called itself since the baptism of the Frankish king Clovis, remained divided into two camps. Today, secular France appears to be largely reconciled with Christian France, which in the past was able to defend its traditions in numerous conflicts over moral and social issues just as vehemently as the secularists.

The basis for reconciliation is the “ceasefire” of 1905. After long arguments, it established a strict separation of church and state in the constitution, but at the same time obliged the religiously neutral republic to protect religious freedom. The Mairie de Paris and the authorities of the red-green capital government are generously making the public space available for the major event free of charge.

The state is providing the necessary security precautions with a very expensive deployment of almost 15,000 police forces. The total costs should amount to 27 million euros. This inevitably attracted critics from the anti-clerical camp. Macron replied that he respected the laity of the Republic to the letter by receiving Leo XIV with full honors as head of state, but not personally attending any mass.