Pope Leo XIV Arrives in France Seeking Peace, Human Dignity, and Dialogue on AI

Church bells rang out across France on Friday as the charter flight carrying Pope Leo XIV touched down at Paris's Orly airport. It marked the start of a four-day visit, the first by a pope to France in 18 years. President Emmanuel Macron met him on the tarmac, and the two are due to meet again at the Élysée Palace.

The itinerary covers Paris, the Catholic shrine at Lourdes and the northeastern city of Metz. Leo has said he hopes to draw attention to his appeals for peace at a time of war, and to encourage deeper reflection as artificial intelligence raises questions about what it means to be human. Upward of a million people are expected to turn out to see him, a level of interest that has surprised observers.

Friday is the busiest day of the trip. Leo was scheduled to give a speech at UNESCO headquarters, celebrate vespers at the newly reopened Notre-Dame cathedral, and then preside over a large youth vigil at the Paris stadium that night.

For Macron, the visit carries its own weight. He is barred from seeking a third term in elections in May, and hosting the American pope is something of a capstone, given that Pope Francis repeatedly declined to make a proper state visit to France during his 12-year pontificate. Charles Mercier, director of history and sociology of Catholicism studies at Paris's EPHE university, said a president at the end of his mandate may find it useful to stand beside the pope and share in some of his popularity. "It's not new," he said.

The backdrop in France is a delicate one. Leo appears intent on stressing Europe's Christian roots and the church's teaching on the value and dignity of human life. France enshrined the right to abortion in its Constitution in 2024, and lawmakers recently gave final approval to a bill allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication. The French Catholic hierarchy opposed both measures, in line with the church's teaching that life must be protected from conception until natural death. But that hierarchy has lost much of its influence amid secularizing trends across Western Europe and a credibility crisis tied to France's reckoning with clergy sexual abuse.

The country's model of secularism, laïcité, is also part of the setting. Enshrined in the Constitution, it guarantees the freedom to believe or not, and to practice a religion so long as it does not disturb public order, while requiring the state to stay neutral toward all faiths. Its key rules come from a 1905 law aimed largely at distancing the state from the then-powerful Catholic Church.

Leo, whose paternal ancestors were French, is not expected to scold the French over abortion or end-of-life law. Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican's editorial director, said he is expected instead to invite them to a broader consideration of what being human means today. Writing in Vatican News, Tornielli said the pope is not landing in the City of Light to condemn anyone or to barge into a French political debate as polarized as any in Europe. He comes, Tornielli wrote, as a shepherd meeting a people, their history and their culture.

Security is on an Olympic scale. Hélène Denéchère, spokesperson for the Paris police prefecture, said the system resembles that used for the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games, with a protective perimeter and further perimeters layered around it. Measures include mounted police, bomb disposal experts, anti-drone defenses and counter-terrorism steps. On Friday, plans in Paris called for 14,000 police officers, gendarmes and military personnel plus 2,500 firefighters. Saturday's numbers, when Leo celebrates Mass at the Place de la Concorde, are only slightly lower.