Pope Leo XIV will visit France over the weekend, marking the first formal visit by the head of the Catholic Church to the European nation in almost two decades.
The Pope will visit France from Friday, September 25 to Monday, September 28. Throughout his three-day Apostolic journey, the Pontiff will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace, will meet with abuse survivors, visit the UNESCO headquarters, and will preside over a massive open-air mass at the Champs-Élysées, with over 600,000 faithful already registered to attend, among several other official events listed by the Vatican.
According to Vatican News, the Pope’s visit will focus on “faith, culture, Europe.”
While Leo’s predecessor, the late Pope Francis, traveled to Strasbourg, Marseille, and Corsica for specific events between 2014 and 2024, but there was no official state visit to France.
It was the late Pope Benedict XVI who last undertook an official visit of France in 2008 before Pope Leo’s upcoming one this weekend.
FILE/French President Nicolas Sarkozy greets Pope Benedict XVI as he arrives in the courtyard of the Elysee palace on September 12, 2008 in Paris, France. The four day trip to Paris and Lourdes was seen as an attempt to reinvigorate Catholicism in France (Julien Hekimian/WireImage)
France 24 observed on Wednesday that in addition to his official agenda, Pope Leo’s visit will be “something of a homecoming” for the American-born Pope, given his “spiritual roots” in French Catholicism, and because Pope Leo XIV — formerly known as Bishop Robert Prevost — had grandparents that came from Normandy and left for the United States.
France 24, citing information from the genealogy website Geneanet, affirmed the Pope is “in fact, 40 percent French.”
“Leo – Robert Prevost before his election as Pope – has French connections on both sides of his family tree,” Christopher White, associate director at Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, told France 24.
“His surname comes from his French great-grandmother on his father’s side, who was born in Normandy,” he added. “On his mother’s side, he has both French Canadian and French Caribbean lineage.”
Most notably, Pope Leo’s father was among the brave Americans that took part in the D-Day landings during World War II over 80 years ago. The U.S. Department of War detailed in 2025 that Louis Marius Prevost served in the American Navy and attained the rank of lieutenant junior grade before the war ended.
FILE/Pope John Paul II (L) waves to the crowd next to French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing in Paris during his official visit in France on May 30, 1980. (AFP via Getty Images)
Pope Leo XIV will also conduct a visit to the Sanctuary of Lourdes, one of the most-visited Catholic shrines in the world, located in the eponymous Southern France town. Pope Leo will preside over a Sunday mass at Lourdes that is expected to have a turnout of around 150,000 faithful.
France 24 further noted that Lourdes is expected to receive a “boost” in its economy driven by an influx of visitors. Similarly, Le Monde observed on Thursday the Pope’s visit is driving tourism across France just days after Canadian pop star icon Céline Dion did the same earlier this month.
Pope Leo will also conduct a “homecoming” visit of Latin America later this year, with stops in Uruguay, Argentina, and Peru — the country where he served the Church for nearly four decades and a nation that the Pope has said is like a second home to him.
The Pope, as Bishop Robert Prevost, served as the head of the diocese of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. Peruvian Catholic faithfuls where among those who jubilantly celebrated when he was elected as the head of the Catholic Church in 2025 — going as far as to claim the Pope as one of their own.