Pope Leo XIV to visit France for four-day tour across Paris, Lourdes and Metz

Four-day itinerary across Paris, Lourdes and Metz

Pope Leo XIV will arrive in France on Friday, 25 September 2026, for a four-day apostolic journey that includes stops in Paris, Lourdes, and Metz. French President Emmanuel Macron will greet the pontiff upon his arrival at Paris-Orly airport before holding an official meeting at the Élysée Palace. The visit marks the first trip to mainland northern France by Leo XIV since his election in May 2025, following earlier trips to France by Pope Francis, who visited Marseille in 2023 and Corsica in 2024. The American pontiff will conclude his travels on Monday in the north-eastern city of Metz alongside Macron.

Protocol arrangements and presidential meetings

The Vatican declined several ceremonial proposals from the Élysée Palace, including the conferral of the Legion of Honour and attendance at a formal state dinner. Vatican officials also turned down a proposed private tour of the restored Notre-Dame cathedral led by Macron following Friday Vespers, citing a tight schedule and the desire to reopen the building to worshippers as quickly as possible. While French newspaper La Croix suggested the decision reflected tensions over France's recently passed end-of-life legislation, the French presidency dismissed that interpretation as groundless controversy. The French Bishops' Conference stated that the itinerary follows standard protocol for an apostolic journey, in which the pontiff is welcomed as head of the Church rather than on a traditional state visit.

Mass registrations and security mobilization

Public interest in the papal tour has generated massive registration numbers across multiple venues, coordinated in part by event organizers GL Events. In Paris, approximately 600,000 people have registered to attend an open-air mass celebrated by the Pope at the Place de la Concorde on Saturday, 26 September. The tour will then shift to south-western France, where 200,000 pilgrims are expected at the Marian sanctuary in Lourdes over the weekend of 26-27 September.

Security operations in Lourdes will involve 3,000 police officers and gendarmes, supported by Sentinelle military units, Swiss Guards, Vatican gendarmes, bomb disposal teams, and surveillance drones. Hautes-Pyrénées Prefect Sibylle Samoyault announced that the town will manage 1,000 buses and 15,000 vehicles using park-and-ride shuttle systems, with road access closed to general traffic on Saturday afternoon and Sunday. Health services will mobilize 700 personnel, including 370 firefighters and 280 volunteers from the Red Cross and the Order of Malta. Bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes Jean-Marc Micas addressed the scale of the gathering.

The sanctuary is used to large pilgrimages, like the one on 15 August. But the biggest of all pilgrimages is a tenth of the one we are preparing to welcome next week.

Meeting with migrants ahead of presidential election

On Saturday morning in Paris, Pope Leo XIV will spend 30 minutes meeting with six migrants from Algeria, Afghanistan, Belarus, Iraq, and Ivory Coast at a diocesan welcome centre. The facility was established following Pope Francis's 2017 appeal to welcome, protect, promote, and integrate displaced persons, and operates in support of documented and undocumented exiles. The meeting takes place seven months before the French presidential election, where migration policy remains a primary campaign topic. Association president Valérie Moniod explained the message behind the pontiff's planned appearance.

In this year that promises to be turbulent in France, faced with financial difficulties and simplistic and brutal responses affecting exiled people, the pope comes to tell the French that, whatever our political convictions, we have in common that we are all human beings and have the right to dignity.