Pope Leo XIV will travel to France on an official state visit from September 25-28, the Vatican announced on Saturday, marking the first such papal visit to the country in 18 years.
The first pope from the United States, elected in May 2025, is scheduled to visit Paris, including the headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations cultural agency, according to a Vatican statement.
The visit follows Leo’s trip to Spain in June and signals a renewed Vatican focus on historically Catholic but increasingly secular European countries.
It will be the first papal state visit to France since Pope Benedict XVI visited in September 2008.
While Pope Francis travelled to France three times during his pontificate—to Strasbourg, Marseille, and Corsica—none of those visits were official state visits by the Holy See.
Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, president of the French Bishops’ Conference, had invited Leo to visit France, an invitation later repeated by President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to the Vatican in April.
“We are delighted that His Holiness Pope Leo XIV has confirmed his visit to France. This visit next September will be an honour for our country, a source of joy for Catholics, and a great moment of hope for everyone,” Macron wrote on X.
‘Missionary zeal’
A French speaker, Leo has on several occasions expressed “the great esteem in which he holds our country and her spiritual history,” Aveline said earlier this month.
“It’s a great joy, but also a great responsibility,” the cardinal said on Saturday after the visit was confirmed.
“In the discussions I have had with the pope since his election, I quickly realised how keen he was on such a visit,” Aveline added. “He is particularly interested in the life of the Church in France, its missionary zeal, and also the challenges it faces.”
In addition to Paris, Leo will travel to Lourdes, one of the world’s best-known Christian pilgrimage sites.
The shrine in the southwestern French town was visited by Pope John Paul II in 1983 and 2004, and later by Benedict XVI in 2008. On each occasion, according to the sanctuary, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered to see the pope.
