Pope Leo Draws Huge Crowds in France as Church Points to Rise in Adult Converts

Pope Leo XIV wrapped up a four-day visit to France on Monday after drawing crowds in the hundreds of thousands, a trip that the French church has presented as evidence of renewed interest in Catholicism in one of Europe’s most secular nations.

The visit began on Friday, Sept. 25, in Paris, where the first American pope prayed at the restored Notre Dame Cathedral, the first papal visit since the 2019 fire that nearly destroyed it, and addressed President Emmanuel Macron and other officials. That night, about 80,000 young people filled the national stadium north of Paris for a prayer vigil with music and dancing.

On Saturday, the pope celebrated an outdoor Mass that stretched along the Champs-Elysees and the Place de la Concorde. The Vatican put attendance at roughly 700,000 to 800,000 people, according to estimates reported by the Associated Press and CBS News, more than the number who had registered in advance. On Sunday he traveled to the shrine at Lourdes in southwestern France, where more than 150,000 people were reported at Mass, before a final stop in the eastern city of Metz.

Church officials have pointed to a striking number as a sign of change: adult baptisms. France recorded about 13,000 adult baptisms at Easter this year, roughly triple the figure of a decade ago, according to the French bishops’ conference. Speaking at the Catholic Institute of Paris on Saturday morning, Leo said he was surprised by the number of recent converts. He also urged French Catholics not to keep their faith to themselves.

The pope also used the trip to raise concerns about technology. Speaking in Paris, he warned that a “paradise of machines” could undermine human dignity and urged the developers of artificial intelligence, and the political leaders who regulate them, to slow down. CBS News reported that he also criticized France’s new law permitting assisted dying.

The broader statistics counsel caution. Total baptisms in France have fallen by nearly two-thirds since 1980, and a national survey by the statistics agency INSEE found that about half of adults between 18 and 59 report no religion, compared with 29 percent who identify as Catholic. Both outlets noted that the rise in adult converts, while real, is small next to that long decline, and that it is too early to say whether the crowds will translate into regular church attendance.

The visit was not universally welcomed. Defenders of France’s strict tradition of secularism, known as laicite, objected to holding a papal Mass on the Place de la Concorde, one of the capital’s most symbolic public squares, and argued that the Invalides, where Pope Benedict XVI said Mass in 2008, would have been a more fitting site. Many of those who came, including some who do not practice the faith, told reporters they were drawn by the pope’s message on social justice, peace and shared values.

The trip was among the most closely watched of Leo’s papacy so far. France’s ambassador to the Holy See, Charles Personnaz, told CBS News the visit sent a hopeful message to young people across Europe.