Pope Leo XIV to celebrate mass on Paris' Champs-Élysées during first papal state visit since 2008

Pope Leo XIV's upcoming visit, from September 25 to 28, marks the first time a pontiff has travelled to France on a state visit since Benedict XVI in 2008. The trip was confirmed on June 26 by Paris Archbishop Laurent Ulrich in an interview with Agence France-Presse. The American pope, who speaks French, will meet with President Emmanuel Macron during his stay in the capital.

Friday's youth gathering and papal tour

On Friday, September 25, the pope will ride the popemobile along the grand boulevards of Paris before celebrating vespers at Notre-Dame Cathedral. Later that evening, a prayer vigil with young people is scheduled at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, where organisers anticipate between 60,000 and 80,000 attendees.

“By choosing these sites, first for their capacity, we want these gatherings to be open to the greatest number, coming certainly from all over France.”

Saturday's mass on the Champs-Élysées

The centrepiece of the visit will be a giant open-air mass on Saturday afternoon, September 26, held on the Place de la Concorde and the adjacent Champs-Élysées. The diocese expects up to 500,000 faithful, though one broadcast report predicted as many as 1.5 million people could attend.

“This shows that the Church in France has ambition for this trip and hopes a lot from it: to federate Catholics, but not only that, to really open this event to all French people.”

A tour of France's symbolic sites

Following the Paris events, the pope will travel to Lourdes in the southwest on Sunday for another open-air mass, and then to Metz in the northeast on Monday for a service at the city's cathedral. Archbishop Ulrich described the choice of locations as "symbolic points of Paris and the country" that express "the joy of an entire nation and its capital in going to meet him."