{"id":12261,"date":"2026-05-06T20:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/12261\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T20:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T20:45:10","slug":"pope-leo-xiv-expected-to-visit-france-in-late-september-french-bishops-announce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/12261\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo XIV expected to visit France in late September, French bishops announce"},"content":{"rendered":"

PARIS\u202f\u2014 The Catholic Church in France is preparing to welcome Pope Leo XIV for an apostolic visit expected to take place at the end of September, the French Bishops\u2019 Conference announced<\/a> in a May 6 communiqu\u00e9. <\/p>\n

While the Holy See has yet to make an official announcement, the news came as no surprise, as rumors of a papal trip to France had been circulating since March.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSince his election, a year ago, Pope Leo XIV has been asked by several bishops to come to France,\u201d the communiqu\u00e9 said. The formal invitation was extended by Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, president of the French Bishops\u2019 Conference, acting in coordination with the apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Celestino Migliore. It received an important boost when French President Emmanuel Macron voiced his own support for the trip during his Vatican visit April 10.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the announcement, Aveline, who has held several working sessions with the pope on the matter, said that \u201cLeo XIV has expressed, on various occasions, the great esteem he holds for our country and its spiritual history.\u201d <\/p>\n

The cardinal continued: \u201cHis coming would be an opportunity to share with the pope what our Church in France is living and to let ourselves be encouraged by his word.\u201d He added that the two had already begun mapping out a tentative itinerary.<\/p>\n

According to the itinerary currently under consideration, the Holy Father would visit both the French capital \u2014 where he is also expected to visit Notre-Dame Cathedral \u2014 and Lourdes, a landmark site of Marian apparitions in the Pyrenees Mountains. <\/p>\n

According to reporting by press agency I.M\u00e9dia quoted<\/a> by Famille chr\u00e9tienne, the name of Scy-Chazelles, a small town in the Moselle department (northeast of France) that is home to the residence and tomb of Robert Schuman \u2014 known as the \u201cFather of Europe\u201d and whose cause of canonization is underway \u2014 has also been regularly mentioned as a possible stop. The Diocese of Metz, however, has said it has no confirmed information to that effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the visit goes ahead as planned, Leo XIV would be the first pope to make an official state visit to France in nearly two decades. The last came in September 2008, when Benedict XVI traveled to Paris and Lourdes. Pope Francis visited France three times during his pontificate \u2014 in Strasbourg in 2014 to address the European Parliament, in Marseille in 2023 for the Mediterranean Meetings, and in Corsica for a symposium on \u201cpopular religiosity in the Mediterranean\u201d in December 2024 \u2014 though none of these trips constituted an official state visit. John Paul II, for his part, made no fewer than seven trips to France across the course of his pontificate.<\/p>\n

The choice of date, according to observers, can be explained by the Holy See\u2019s desire to distance itself sufficiently from the electoral calendar in the interest of neutrality, as the presidential elections are scheduled for the first half of 2027.<\/p>\n

The announcement comes at a time of unexpected renewal for Catholicism<\/a> in France, a country known as the \u201celdest daughter of the Church\u201d but long associated with aggressive \u201claicit\u00e9\u201d (\u201csecularism\u201d) and de-Christianization. <\/p>\n

In recent years, the Church has seen a steady increase in the number of adult catechumens, with 13,000 of them receiving baptism at Easter this year. In response, the bishops of the \u00cele-de-France region convened<\/a> a dedicated pastoral council focused on how to welcome these newcomers appropriately \u2014 accompanying them not only through the sacraments of initiation but also toward a lasting and deeply rooted life of faith.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pending the official announcement from the Holy See, the bishops of France have asked all the faithful to hold the preparation of this event in prayer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PARIS\u202f\u2014 The Catholic Church in France is preparing to welcome Pope Leo XIV for an apostolic visit expected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[3351,2340,5,9291,3838],"class_list":{"0":"post-12261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-catholic-church-in-france","9":"tag-catholic-news","10":"tag-france","11":"tag-papal-trips","12":"tag-pope-leo-xiv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}