Pope Leo
On his third day in France, Leo once again waded into the end-of-life debate that has erupted in countries around the world. It roiled French politics for years before recently leading to legislation allowing terminally ill adults to receive lethal drugs.
Leo’s visit to France, which was strongly Catholic and officially secular, was marked by huge crowds – 800,000 people at Leo’s Mass in Paris’s famous Place de la Concorde – and his messages against abortion and assisted dying.
On Sunday, the American pope celebrated Mass in front of about 150,000 people – many in wheelchairs – in the meadow next to Lourdes’ main cathedral. Then he visited the patient care center inside the campus. He sought to particularly encourage those living in “terrible pain” that they have an inherent dignity that no law or algorithm can “eradicate.”
“On the contrary, in the name of inalienable human dignity, we must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion,” he added. “What is legal is not necessarily moral,” Liu said to applause from the audience.
Lourdes became a major pilgrimage destination after the Catholic Church officially recognized visions of the Virgin Mary reported by a young girl here in 1858. The site, close to the Spanish border, attracts millions of pilgrims each year, especially sick and disabled faithful who hope for healing from the famous spring waters of the Grotto of Lourdes where the visions allegedly occurred.
Leo arrived in Lourdes from Paris on Saturday night and immediately prayed inside the Grotto of the Apparitions and drank from the fountain.
Paris pilgrim Pierre Kazelich said: “He gave a message of hope to France, a message of hope and greatness to France, and renewal to France.”
The Pope delivers a message about life while in France
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In France, Leo repeatedly called for renewed respect for life in line with Catholic teachings that human life must be protected and defended from conception to natural death. The teaching translates into resolute opposition to abortion, euthanasia, and medically assisted death.
In Lourdes, where the Church has recognized 72 “miraculous” cures as real, the issue of respect for even the weakest, sickest and most vulnerable people has become particularly acute.
“Your crutches, wheelchairs and hidden tears are not obstacles, but rather a place where you are fully respected and welcomed,” Liu said in his sermon. “Lourdes is blessed as a place to recognize the beauty and sanctity of life, because here life is welcomed as a precious gift from God.”
Survivors visit Lourdes as part of the healing process
More recently, Lourdes has also become a place of healing for survivors of clerical sexual abuse. Liu was scheduled to meet with seven survivors later Sunday, including one who was abused as an adult, in recognition of the new frontiers of the abuse crisis facing the church.
The French Church has endured a brutal reckoning over its legacy of abuse. An independent report in 2021 estimated that 330,000 children were abused over 70 years by about 3,000 priests and church workers.
Despite criticism of the report’s methodology and conclusions, the French bishops have established an independent system to compensate victims, and have so far recommended the church pay more than 20 million euros ($22.7 million).
During a meeting with the French bishops on Sunday morning, Liu praised their response to the victims and urged them to continue. But he also acknowledged that the decline in priestly vocations in the French Church was linked to the scandal, since the priesthood is sometimes viewed with suspicion.
“For priestly vocations to flourish, the priest must be welcomed, accepted and loved,” Liu said.
On the day Leo arrived in Paris, a group of victims wrote an open letter demanding that he acknowledge the church’s responsibility in the scandal, highlighting what critics see as a conflict of interest in which bishops are asked to be spiritual fathers to their priests and judges when they abuse them.
“The Church must abandon its position as judge and party to the proceedings,” the victims wrote in the letter, which was published by the French newspaper Liberation. The victims also complained that only seven of them would meet Leo, who was chosen by the church.
Monsignor Pierre-Antoine Bouzoux, spokesman for the bishops’ conference, said Liu deliberately wanted to keep the group small to facilitate an intimate encounter.
“When it comes to listening to them, you can’t have 50 people in front of you,” he said. “So I think this is what the Pope has really chosen: to listen so that we can act and respond more effectively.”
The mosaic is a painful reminder of the alleged abuses
In Lourdes, Leo was also reminded of a thorny abuse case he inherited from Pope Francis.
The facade of one of Lourdes Cathedral was designed by Father Marko Rubinek, one of the most famous mosaic artists in the Catholic Church.
Rubinek is currently on trial in a Vatican court, where more than two dozen women accuse him of psychologically, spiritually and sexually abusing them starting in the 1990s, including while creating his artwork.
His case had been covered up for three decades by his Jesuit superiors, and even Francis was suspected of protecting his fellow Jesuits. In response to media outcry, Francis ordered a legal trial to be held in 2024, which is ongoing.
Rupnik’s case has raised questions about what to do with his mosaics that adorn churches around the world.
Bishop of Lourdes Jean-Marc Mekas decided in 2025 to cover the facade of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Rosier, arguing that victims of abuse who come to Lourdes to heal should not be forced to see them.
On Sunday, Leo drove past the cathedral in his papal car, past mosaic panels now covered with mustard-colored curtains held together with plastic ties.
In a letter to Liu before his trip, five women who said they had been abused by Rupnick praised Mekas’ decision to cover the mosaics, but criticized the Vatican’s handling of their case and the three decades it took to hear from them.
“We the victims have witnessed this long and loud silence as additional ongoing violence,” they wrote.
—Associated Press writer Samuel Petriquin in Paris contributed to this report.
