{"id":964493,"date":"2026-05-16T14:38:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T14:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/964493\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T14:38:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T14:38:14","slug":"pope-leo-to-visit-france-sept-25-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/964493\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo to visit France Sept. 25-28"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong> The Vatican announced that the first U.S. pope, elected in May 2025, will make a notable visit to Paris to tour the headquarters of the United Nations\u2019 cultural agency, UNESCO. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The visit will come after a trip to Spain in June, demonstrating the pope&#8217;s interest in engaging with historically Catholic but increasingly secular European countries which had been largely overlooked by his predecessor, Francis, <a href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News.Az<\/a> reports, citing <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/live-news\/20260516-pope-leo-to-visit-france-september-25-28\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">France24<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It will be the first papal state visit to <a href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/news\/frances-justice-minister-heads-to-algeria-amid-improving-relations\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">France<\/a> since Benedict XVI went in September 2008.<\/p>\n<p>While Francis visited France three times as pope &#8212; to Strasbourg, Marseille and the island of Corsica &#8212; those trips were not official state visits by the Holy See.<\/p>\n<p>The president of the French Bishops&#8217; Conference (CEF), Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, had extended an invitation to Leo to visit France, one repeated by President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to the pontiff at the Vatican in April.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are delighted that His Holiness Pope Leo XIV has confirmed his visit to France. This visit next September will be an honour for our country, a source of joy for Catholics and a great moment of hope for everyone,&#8221; Macron posted on X.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News.Az<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"by-user\" href=\"https:\/\/news.az\/journalists\/ulviyya-salmanli\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">By Ulviyya Salmanli<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Vatican announced that the first U.S. pope, elected in May 2025, will make a notable visit to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":964494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36,95883,42377,23904],"class_list":["post-964493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-france","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-francis","tag-pope-leo","tag-visit"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116584769486475579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=964493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/964494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}