Pope Leo XIV opens a four-day visit to France this weekend that is expected to touch on church teaching about the value of all human life VATICAN CITY -- When an ailing Pope John Paul II visited the French shrine at Lourdes in 2004, on his last foreign trip, he delivered a forceful condemnation of abortion and euthanasia as he gasped for air during Mass. Pope Leo XIV is expected to make a similar appeal to protect life when he visits France this weekend and also prays at Lourdes. One of Christianity’s most-visited pilgrimage destinations is especially popular for sick people because of its association with miraculous cures.
Leo’s message will likely land differently, since France’s National Assembly in 2024 enshrined abortion as a constitutional right and recently gave final approval to a bill allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication. It was the culmination of years of debate over end-of-life care in France and comes as other countries in Europe and the Americas have increasingly legalized assisted dying, though British lawmakers recently voted down a bill allowing it. Catholic teaching holds that life must be defended from conception until natural death.
It insists that chronically ill patients, including those in vegetative states, must receive “ordinary” care such as hydration and nutrition, but that “extraordinary” or disproportionate care can be suspended if it is only prolonging a precarious and painful life. With Leo’s blessing, French bishops decided the official motto of his trip would be “That the world may have life,” suggesting that protecting human life and human dignity will be an overarching theme of the visit. Leo has emphasized the need to protect the dignity of all human life, from immigrants to the sick and unborn, most significantly in his inaugural encyclical on safeguarding human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence.
Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, president of the bishops’ conference, said he expected Leo would raise the issue. And like many countries in the once-traditionally Christian West, France has seen the influence of the Catholic Church wane amid secularizing trends and the impact of the clergy sexual abuse scandal on its credibility. Yet French bishops have expressed astonishment at the level of interest in the pope’s Sept. 25-28 visit and say they expect 1 million people will see him.
Due to larger-than-expected crowds, organizers lengthened the perimeter for Leo's main Mass at the central Place de la Concorde, extending the site beyond the 1.9-kilometer (1.2-mile) length of the Champs-Elysees where he'll parade down in his popemobile. Leo elicited a similar level of interest in secular Spain in June, where he received a seven-minute standing ovation after his speech to the Spanish Parliament. More than 13,000 adults were baptized at Easter this year in France, where the number of adult baptisms has more than tripled since 2016, the French bishops’ conference reported.
Leo will meet with some of these new converts in a special audience. But experts caution these numbers don't counteract the overall generational trend of the children of practicing French Catholics no longer going to Mass or baptizing their babies. In 1980, there were 513,000 baptisms in France; in 2024, a total of 186,000.
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