'Leo effect': How the Pope's visit sparked a Catholic revival in secular France

Last evening, after a private meeting with President Emmanuel Macron and a tarmac ceremony of military honours and national anthems, Leo XIV boarded his Air France flight to Rome, completing his fifth international trip as pope. Most observers agree that the trip was a major success. Over four days in Paris, Lourdes and Metz, the Chicago-born pontiff moved comfortably between the grandeur of the French state, the devotion of the Catholic faithful and the demands of modern media. It offered a glimpse of a papacy that is proving difficult to fit into familiar labels.

The numbers alone unsettle assumptions about France. Once called the eldest daughter of the church, France now has more than half its people describing themselves as non-religious. Yet an estimated 800,000 people filled the Champs-Élysées and the Place de la Concorde for an open-air Mass, on ground where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were executed, and Republican symbolism runs deep. Some 80,000 young people packed the Stade de France for a prayer vigil, and more than 150,000 gathered at Lourdes.

Many observers interpret the turnout as part of a wider Catholic revival. Adult and adolescent baptisms rose 20 per cent this year, driven largely by Generation Z's search for meaning in an uncertain world. The shift is from inherited, habitual Catholicism to a chosen and publicly worn faith. Whether it endures is another matter, but a crowd of this size, which remained active and fervent, is hard to dismiss as mere nostalgia.

Leo dwelt upon multiple topics while in France, but was firmest on technology and artificial intelligence. At UNESCO headquarters in Paris, he warned against a "paradise of machines" that erodes human agency. On the flight home, he said expert warnings about AI must be taken seriously, and noted that the Vatican has set up its own commission to ensure the technology does not endanger humanity.

At Lourdes, a shrine built on the hopes of the sick, he turned to France's newly enacted law on medically assisted dying. He called it "false compassion" and reminded listeners that "what is legal is not necessarily moral". The same town produced the most delicate encounter during the trip, a two-hour private meeting with seven survivors of clerical abuse. A 2021 inquiry estimated 330,000 victims in the French Church over seven decades. Leo pledged to prevent future harm and backed the decision to cover the sanctuary façade mosaics by the accused artist Marko Rupnik.

Politics certainly played a key role in shaping the contours of the visit. Macron stayed away from the Mass in Paris on September 26, sending his wife Brigitte and Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to honour the separation of church and state. However, he abruptly changed his schedule yesterday to attend Mass in Metz, hold talks with the Pope and praise his vision for Europe. It was a careful adjustment, and the constitutional line held. Marine Le Pen, the far-right presidential contender, was at the Paris Mass, a reminder that crowds of this scale are crucial ahead of national elections.

While in France, Leo also presented himself as a quiet counterweight to Washington and to far-right populism. At the Robert Schuman Centre in Metz, named after a founder of European integration, Leo made a broad case for European unity, multilateralism and democratic values. His call to reject "lies and deceit" and to welcome migrants fleeing persecution was widely seen as a rebuttal of the Trump administration's claim that Europe faces "civilizational erasure". Leo also signalled support for journalists targeted by White House media restrictions, and said that fusing far-right ideology with religion cannot be an "authentic expression of Christianity".

The pattern is of a pope who declines to identify with either camp. He defended life and doctrine at Lourdes that pleased conservatives, then defended migrants and multilateralism in Metz in terms that pleased their opponents. Macron's late embrace shows how quickly a secular state can borrow the glow of a papal visit while keeping its distance from the message.