Pope Leo XIV to press pro-life message during pivotal France visit

Vaticancity,UPDATED: Sep 21, 2026 12:32 IST

Pope Leo XIV is expected to use his visit to France this week to press the Catholic Church's message on protecting human life, with Lourdes likely to be a key stop in that appeal. The shrine, one of Christianity's most visited pilgrimage sites and especially popular with the sick because of its association with miraculous cures, was also the setting of a strong anti-abortion and anti-euthanasia appeal by Pope John Paul II during his last foreign trip in 2004.

Leo's message is likely to carry particular weight in France, where the Assembly in 2024 made abortion a constitutional right and recently gave final approval to a bill allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication. With Leo's blessing, French bishops chose the official motto of the September 25-28 trip as "That the world may have life", signalling that the protection of human life and human dignity will be a central theme of the visit.

Catholic teaching says life must be defended from conception until natural death. It also holds that chronically ill patients, including those in vegetative states, must receive ordinary care such as hydration and nutrition, while extraordinary or disproportionate care can be stopped if it is only prolonging a precarious and painful life. Leo has repeatedly stressed the dignity of all human life, from immigrants to the sick and the unborn, including in his inaugural encyclical on protecting 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. "We already know that the question of life and respect for life - not only from an ethical standpoint, but in many ways - is at the heart of the pope's message and aligns very closely with the message of the Gospel," he said.

France, though traditionally Catholic, follows a strict form of secularism in public life rooted in a 1905 law separating church and state. Like many countries in the once traditionally Christian West, it has also seen the Catholic Church's influence weaken amid secularising trends and the impact of the clergy sexual abuse scandal on its credibility.

Even so, French bishops have said they are surprised by the level of interest in Leo's visit and expect one million people to see him. Organisers have expanded the perimeter for his main Mass at Place de la Concorde because of larger-than-expected crowds, extending the site beyond the 1.9-kilometre length of the Champs-Elysees, where he will travel in the popemobile. Leo drew similar interest in Spain in June, where he received a seven-minute standing ovation after speaking to the Spanish Parliament.

"I think nobody many months ago or a few months ago would have imagined" the level of interest, said Sister Nathalie Becquart, a senior Vatican official from France. "But they see what happened in Spain." France, like Spain, has also seen growing numbers of adult baptisms in recent years, especially among conservative young adults drawn to more traditional forms of worship, including the old Latin Mass.

More than 13,000 adults were baptised at Easter this year in France, where adult baptisms have more than tripled since 2016, according to the bishops' conference. Leo will meet some of these new converts in a special audience. Experts, however, say the rise does not reverse the wider generational trend of the children of practising French Catholics no longer attending Mass or baptising their babies. There were 513,000 baptisms in France in 1980, compared with 186,000 in 2024. "The new phenomenon of adult baptisms is put into perspective; in fact, it represents only a very modest rebound," said Christian Marquant, a traditionalist Catholic who blames the secularising crisis in the French church on the modernising reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Leo will also use the trip to address issues beyond France. On the first day, he will visit UNESCO to speak about artificial intelligence and the value of education and art. In his AI encyclical, "Magnificent Humanity", he called for strong regulation of AI and for developers to slow down. On September 28, he will travel to Metz, birthplace of Robert Schuman, one of the founding figures of European integration, where he will join other faith leaders and speak at a European peace conference at a time of war in Ukraine and elsewhere.

The Vatican has also announced in advance that Leo will meet clergy sexual abuse survivors in France, an unusual step. The group of seven includes one person who was abused as an adult, reflecting what the church sees as a newer dimension of the abuse crisis. France's church has faced a severe reckoning over abuse, with an independent report in 2021 estimating that 330,000 children were abused over 70 years by around 3,000 priests and church workers. Despite criticism of the report's methodology and conclusions, French bishops set up an independent compensation system that has so far recommended church payouts of more than 20 million euros.

In Lourdes, Leo will also confront a difficult case linked to the legacy of Pope Francis. The facade of one of the basilicas there was designed by the Rev. Marko Rupnik, a well-known mosaic artist who is now on trial in a Vatican court after more than two dozen women accused him of psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse starting in the 1990s, including during the creation of his artworks. Amid the controversy, Lourdes Bishop Jean-Marc Micas first stopped illuminating the facade of the Notre Dame du Rosaire Basilica at night, then ordered the decorated doors to be covered, and later decided to cover the facade's mosaics entirely so that abuse survivors visiting Lourdes for healing would not have to see them. "Since some of the abuse was allegedly committed during the creation of the mosaics, it is impossible to separate the work of art from the abuse," said Laura Sgro, lawyer for five of the women who accused Rupnik.

Leo's France visit is therefore expected to combine a message on the defence of life with speeches on AI, education and peace, while also addressing the continuing fallout of clergy sexual abuse and the wider place of the Catholic Church in a secular society.

With PTI Inputs

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