Paris, Sept 27. (dpa/GNA) – Pope Leo XIV, celebrated a large Mass in the centre of Paris, attended by 700,000 people on Saturday, the highlight of his ongoing visit to France.
Amidst loud cheers from a huge crowd, Leo travelled down the Champs-Élysées in the Popemobile. The Mass then took place at the Place de la Concorde, one of the largest squares in Paris.
Hours earlier, the area had already become completely gridlocked. Among those attending were many prominent French politicians, including Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu ,and the far-right politician Marine Le Pen, who hopes to become president next year.
President Emmanuel Macron, who is no longer eligible to stand for election, did not attend, citing the strict separation of Church and state in France. His wife, Brigitte, was present instead.
Many worshippers passed the time before the service singing in choirs, while some wore French national football shirts bearing the words “Pape Léon” and the number 14, a playful reference to Leo XIV.
One of the hundreds of thousands present, Étienne Fabre, said: “We’ve been waiting almost 20 years for this visit here in Paris. We’ve sorely missed the pope.” No pope has been in Paris since Benedict XVI visited in 2008.
Large areas around the Champs-Élysées and extending across the Seine river were cordoned off for security reasons.
Leo, the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, has been in France since Friday on a four-day visit. On Saturday morning, the pope visited a social centre and later met adults who had recently been baptized. He urged them to remain steadfast in their Christian faith and to spread it to others.
According to the French Bishops’ Conference, 13,000 adults were baptized in France this year, three times as many as a decade ago. The number of infant baptisms, however, has more than halved since 2000.
Later on Saturday, Leo is due to travel to the Marian pilgrimage site of Lourdes in the south-west of the country. Lourdes became a major Catholic pilgrimage site after Bernadette Soubirous, a young peasant girl, reported seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary there in 1858.
At the start of his visit on Friday, Leo was received by President Emmanuel Macron. During the meeting, the pope paid tribute to France as the country of human rights, but also criticized a new law permitting assisted suicide and the constitutional protection of the right to abortion.
The visit is Leo’s first to France since he was elected pope last year. The final stop of his tour on Monday will be Metz, near the French-German border, where the US-born pontiff is due to deliver a speech on Europe.
Catholics remain the largest religious group in the country of around 69 million people, although the proportion of Muslims has risen significantly in recent years, and many people no longer identify with any religion.
GNA