Pope Leo XIV, in France, will bring Catholic social teaching to a secular Europe
Pope Leo XIV will spend four days in Paris, Lourdes, and Metz from Sept. 25‑28, proclaiming Catholic social doctrine on issues such as end‑of‑life, immigration, and artificial intelligence. The visit is seen as a chance for the pope to make the Church’s social teaching more visible in a country that is increasingly secular, where 51% of adults report no religious affiliation. French officials and observers note that recent events—attacks on churches, Notre‑Dame fire, and the Church’s COVID‑19 charity work—have made the public more receptive to Catholic ideas. The pope is expected to address sensitive topics under France’s laïcité regime, including the country’s new legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia, which conflict with Catholic teaching.
6 days ago
Pope Leo XIV’s Sept. 25–28 visit to Paris, Lourdes, and Metz is expected to bring Catholic teaching into public debates on life, artificial intelligence, migration, and Europe’s future. Vatican officials and French Church representatives also present the trip as an opportunity to encourage renewed Christian faith, social cohesion, and diplomacy in a largely secular society. 1 3 4
France has become more secular since Pope Benedict XVI’s 2008 visit: survey data from 2019–2020 found that 51% of adults reported no religious affiliation, 29% identified as Catholic, and 8% attended church regularly. At the same time, Church representatives describe renewed interest in Catholicism, including a rise in adult and adolescent baptisms and growing participation by young people. 1
The articles attribute greater openness to Catholicism partly to public responses to attacks on churches, the 2016 killing of Father Jacques Hamel, the 2019 Notre-Dame fire, and the Church’s charitable work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Apostolic Nuncio to France, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, said registrations for major events filled within days and cited polls indicating that more than 80% of French people view Leo favorably. 1 4
The visit will take place in a country shaped by laïcité, the legal separation of Church and state. Father Patrick Valdrini, a former rector of the Institut Catholique de Paris, described the tradition as involving distrust of religion’s contribution to public life; he said Leo’s trip would emphasize its pastoral and apostolic dimension as well as its formal state-visit ceremonies. 1
France’s recent legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia is expected to make end-of-life issues a prominent subject. Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Leo would reaffirm the Church’s defense of life from conception to natural death, while calling for care, palliative services, and support for people experiencing illness and suffering. 1 3
At Lourdes, the Pope is expected to meet and pray with sick and vulnerable people, emphasizing human dignity regardless of illness or disability. He will also meet privately with abuse survivors and French bishops at the shrine. 1
At UNESCO in Paris, Leo is expected to address the challenges posed by artificial intelligence. Parolin connected the issue to the Pope’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas, saying technological advances should not diminish recognition of human creativity, dignity, or the importance of culture and education. 1 3
A visit to a migrant integration center run by the Archdiocese of Paris will bring the Pope into a politically contentious debate ahead of France’s 2027 presidential election. France’s ambassador to the Holy See, Charles Personnaz, said Leo’s previous remarks had been balanced and had stressed helping people remain in their homelands; Migliore also cited migration, social cohesion, and the separation of communities among France’s challenges. 1 4
In Metz, Leo is expected to address interreligious dialogue and Europe’s future, including the legacy of Robert Schuman, a founder of European integration. Parolin called for renewed European cooperation, reconciliation, and multilateral diplomacy, arguing that lasting peace requires engagement with others rather than reliance on deterrence and an arms race alone. 1 3
Parolin described UNESCO as a setting where education and culture can foster cooperation and prepare people to engage across differences. He said the Church’s role includes forming consciences, building bridges, and giving voice to people at risk of being unheard; Migliore likewise cast the visit as a message of peace and social cohesion to a “hesitant Europe.” 3 4
The Paris program includes a prayer vigil at the 81,000-seat Stade de France and an open-air Mass at Place de la Concorde, where organizers expected up to 600,000 people. The visit is also the focus of an atypical wave of donations to dioceses helping cover event costs. 1
The trip is described as the first papal state visit to France since Benedict XVI’s 2008 journey, although Pope Francis visited the country three times. A report that the Holy See declined a French government request for President Emmanuel Macron to accompany Leo into Notre-Dame for a prayer service was attributed to La Croix; the Holy See Press Office and the Élysée did not respond to requests for comment. 1
Catholic social teaching and human dignity in secular Europe
Catholic social teaching does not treat a secular Europe as a society in which faith must disappear from public life. It asks whether Europe’s laws, institutions, and economic arrangements serve the dignity of every person and the common good. The Church’s social doctrine draws on both biblical faith and human reason, and John Paul II described it as a resource for building a humane society in justice, peace, freedom, and solidarity.
For Catholic teaching, human dignity is inherent: it comes from God, not from usefulness, achievement, social status, or majority approval. That makes dignity a standard by which laws and institutions themselves should be judged. A majority may make laws, but it cannot make a person’s basic worth conditional or simply vote it away.
This conviction has public consequences. It calls for protection of human life, respect for religious freedom and freedom of thought, safeguards against discrimination, and concern for people who lack food, work, or the essentials of life. It also challenges social arrangements that treat people merely as economic units or discard them when they are weak, ill, or old.
Catholic social teaching affirms human rights, but understands the person not as an isolated individual. Rights and duties exist within relationships—with families, communities, and society—and should be ordered toward the common good: the conditions that enable people and groups to flourish. Pope Francis warned that treating rights as detached from duties and social bonds risks turning them into limitless claims that can undermine the good of others.
This is relevant to secular politics because it offers a way to discuss disagreements without reducing public life to either religious authority or individual preference. The Church can contribute moral arguments to civic debate while recognizing that citizens may dispute which policies best realize shared goods. The teaching does not prescribe one party programme; it supplies principles for assessing policies by their effects on dignity and the common good.
A society’s respect for dignity is tested not only by its declarations of rights but by people’s material circumstances. Catholic teaching highlights unemployment, precarious livelihood, poverty, and exclusion, insisting that the economy serve people rather than make them subordinate to the market. Work matters both as a means of supporting life and as a way people participate in society; economic policy should therefore be assessed by whether it protects human dignity in social and economic relations.
The Church’s critique is not that secular Europe has no moral insight, nor that all secular policies are unjust. It is that a public culture can weaken its own account of dignity if it treats fundamental values as whatever technology, calculation, or a shifting majority happens to endorse. John Paul II argued that freedom needs a moral foundation: without truth, freedom can be distorted; without freedom, appeals to justice can become oppressive.
At the same time, Catholic social teaching is offered beyond the Church’s membership. Its principles can be considered by people of different beliefs because they address shared human concerns: life, rights, work, solidarity, family, and the common good. Christians are therefore called not merely to criticize European institutions, but to serve within civic life—through politics, education, health care, culture, and economic activity—and to make those settings more humane.
In sum, the Catholic question for secular Europe is not simply whether public life is religious or nonreligious. It is whether its understanding of freedom, rights, and progress protects the dignity of every person—including the vulnerable—and enables people and communities to flourish together.