Pope draws huge crowd to central Paris for outdoor Mass
Pope Leo XIV led an open-air Mass at Place de la Concorde in Paris on Saturday, with Vatican estimates saying about 800,000 people attended. He traveled along the Champs-Élysées in the popemobile before the service. The event was part of a four-day papal visit to France, and he later went to Lourdes to pray at the Grotto of Massabielle.
Pope Leo XIV, 71, is making a four-day apostolic journey to France, the first official papal trip there in almost twenty years. The country is formally secular yet historically strongly Catholic. On the second day, he rode the popemobile along the Champs-Élysées before celebrating Mass at Place de la Concorde under a large white canopy.
Vatican figures put the crowd at roughly 800,000, stretching more than two kilometers past the Arc de Triomphe. Security included sealed central streets, overhead helicopters and rooftop snipers. The pope later traveled to Lourdes to pray at the Grotto of Massabielle. He is also scheduled to meet seven clerical sex-abuse victims; a 2021 inquiry reported about 330,000 minors abused in France over seven decades.
The Paris Mass may reinforce the Catholic Church’s public visibility in a secular France and could energize believers, while the scale of the event may also affect residents and businesses in central Paris. The pope’s planned meeting with abuse victims could keep church accountability in public discussion. With presidential candidates present months before an election, the visit may subtly shape political atmospherics, though its immediate impact is likely religious and symbolic.