Leo’s visit across France offers a more personal glimpse of the pope

By Christopher Lamb, CNN

Metz, France (CNN) — France may have a highly secularized culture, but it has given Pope Leo XIV a superstar welcome.

In Paris, around 800,000 lined the Champs-Élysées avenue, some waving Vatican or French flags while others climbed trees or stood on each other’s shoulders to get a glimpse of the popemobile. In Lourdes, a holy site in southern France, around 150,000 attended an open-air papal Mass, according to Vatican estimates which dwarf the numbers of faithful who turned out for the last papal visit in 2008.

During the four-day visit, Leo appeared comfortable and relaxed, delivering most of his speeches and reflections in French, as the Chicago-born pontiff sought to tackle several themes during the trip.

A strong focus of Leo’s has been on trying to revitalize faith in a traditional European Catholic heartland as well as on addressing the clerical sexual abuse scandal and big political topics such as artificial intelligence. He’s also offered some more personal, unscripted remarks, helping to shape a clearer picture of himself.

He wants Europe to draw on its Christian roots

While his predecessor never made official visits to the major Catholic European countries of France and Spain, Pope Leo has traveled to both within the first year and a half since his election.

France is sometimes described as the “eldest daughter of the church” because of its deep Catholic roots, but it’s also faced a long-term trend of declining church attendance with estimates of just 5-8% of the population heading to the pews each week.

French bishops have more recently reported some good news though: a surprising rise in new church entrants after around 8,200 adolescents and 13,200 adults were baptized in 2026. That’s a 20% increase on the year prior, with the church also saying 42% of the adults seeking baptism are aged 18-25, a reflection of a trend showing Gen Z’s openness to religious faith.

It’s something Pope Leo will have noted at the Stade de France when 80,000 young people packed the venue for a jubilant – and loud – prayer vigil. It was similar to when the pontiff visited Spain in June.

“There is a quest for meaning. People need and are in search of meaning and answers to the big existential question,” Rev. Benoît Pouzin, a priest in southwest France involved in youth ministry, told CNN.

France has a strict separation between church and state, so each papal visit needs to be carefully navigated. But in a surprising twist, Leo’s Mass in Paris was celebrated on the Place de la Concorde, a site deeply linked to the secular Republic as it’s where the last king of France, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were guillotined. The separation of the church started with the fall of the monarchy during the French Revolution.

In another unusual move later in the trip, President Emmanuel Macron also attended a papal Mass in Metz, a city in the northeast, despite criticism in 2023 for doing the same during Pope Francis’ visit.

He’s at ease with reporters

Many among the crowds also pointed to Leo’s role as the other major US leader on the world stage. It’s hard not to see him as a counterweight to President Donald Trump. In contrast to the Trump administration, the pope has called for stronger guardrails around the development of artificial intelligence, warning against a “paradise of machines” while in Paris.

The pope, who spoke out against the US war in Iran, also wants a more united Europe, a stronger European Union and stronger international cooperation. “Today, relations between individuals and states are becoming increasingly uncivilized,” the pope said in Metz on Monday. “The value of keeping one’s word is dismissed; instead, people boast of lies and deceit.”

The pope’s speech also praised one of the founders of the European Union, Robert Schuman, for whom there is an ongoing formal cause to make him a saint.

On the papal plane, the American pontiff responded to Trump’s White House media ban, which includes CNN and other outlets. In answer to a question from CNN, he said he was “very happy that, here, you are all welcome and good coverage, I think, is very important and that we have it all the way around, for everyone.” The response was classic Leo: signaling his support for the press but not wishing to create an unnecessary dispute with the president.

The American pope’s in-flight interactions with journalists were rare, unscripted moments, with his answers often revealing more about his personality. On the flight from Rome to Paris, the pope was asked if he had anything to do with a miraculous recent Chicago White Sox victory, his beloved baseball team. “No comment,” he said before adding with a smile, “Great things happen in Chicago.”

He also recalled childhood memories of watching Fulton Sheen, the American archbishop and broadcaster who was recently declared “blessed,” one step ahead of sainthood, and revealed he’d been practising his French but was no longer using the Duolingo language app. “It’s fake news!” he said about recent reports. Leo has in the past been spotted using Duolingo to learn German.

Leo isn’t simply vocal about challenges of his homeland. He also voiced concern over assisted dying with France recently approving legislation granting the right to the incurably ill, which is strongly opposed by the Catholic Church. Leo spoke on the subject several times during his visit – most clearly in the “miracle shrine” town of Lourdes, known for drawing many sick and terminally ill pilgrims to its shrine.

A willingness to tackle church scandal

The pope must, however, continue to wrestle with Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandals. France was left shocked by a 2021 report that estimated around 330,000 children were sexually abused over 70 years by priests or other church figures. He addressed this by telling crowds the church must admit its own failings and heal “deep wounds” before holding a two-hour meeting with seven survivors of abuse.

The Vatican said that Leo thanked them “for their painful testimony” while “reaffirming his commitment to ensuring that the harm they suffered is not repeated for others.”

But the scandal still lingers. On the façade of the basilica in Lourdes, banners were placed over controversial mosaics ahead of Leo’s visit. These mosaics – which will now be covered indefinitely – were designed by a Slovenian priest and artist, Rev. Marko Rupnik, accused of sexual and psychological abuse of adult women. A local bishop said the pope backed how the apostolic nunciature was handling the artist’s works. Bishop Jean-Marc Micas also said Leo had ordered the Vatican’s in-house media outlets to stop using Rupnik art. Rupnik, who maintains his innocence, is facing a church trial in the Vatican, which complainants say is taking too long and lacks transparency.

The pope was elected 16-months ago and is still carving out a narrative for his papacy. Some in the Vatican find him difficult to read, and the pope is known for keeping his cards close to his chest. But it’s out on the open road when he travels abroad, in France and, in November, in Latin America, where the Leo papacy is beginning to take shape.

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CNN’s Joseph Ataman contributed to this report.