Pope Leo XIV Celebrates Open-Air Mass at Lourdes, Then Meets Abuse Victims in Private

Pope Leo XIV is spending Sunday in the southwestern pilgrimage town of Lourdes, where he is expected to celebrate an open-air Mass this morning at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes — the centerpiece of the second day of a four-day visit to France that is itself a historic occasion. It is the first official papal state visit to the country in 18 years, and it has already drawn crowds on a scale the Vatican rarely sees in Europe. France 24 is following the day as it unfolds.

The scene on Sunday morning is one of quiet anticipation rather than spectacle. A photograph published alongside the coverage shows a priest arriving ahead of the pontiff's Mass at the sanctuary on the morning of September 27, an indication of the preparations being made for a gathering expected to draw many thousands of the faithful, along with pilgrims who have travelled to Lourdes specifically to see the pope in person.

The visit has been front-loaded with large public events. On Saturday evening, Leo brought the first day of the French tour to a close with a youth vigil at a stadium in Paris, a setting aimed squarely at a younger Catholic audience. Earlier the same day he celebrated an open-air Mass in central Paris attended by some 800,000 people, according to France 24's reporting, exceeding even the half-million that had been predicted in advance. Lourdes, with its far smaller geography and a sanctuary that has been built up over more than a century and a half, cannot compete with those numbers — but the atmosphere expected there is likely to be no less intense.

Lourdes is among the most important Marian shrines in the world. The sanctuary draws on the apparitions reported by the young Bernadette Soubirous in 1858, and the Grotto of Massabielle at the heart of the complex remains the focal point of a pilgrimage that each year brings millions of visitors, many of them elderly, many walking or arriving in organised groups from across France and beyond. A papal Mass there carries a symbolism far removed from the pope's more ceremonial visits to cathedrals and state capitals: it places the papacy at the heart of popular Catholic practice, in a place where faith is expressed less through doctrine than through ritual, water, candles and procession.

Sunday's programme is deliberately built around two very different registers. The morning belongs to the public, the great open-air liturgy at the sanctuary, and to the broader prayer for the nation that France 24's earlier coverage of the visit was headlining. The afternoon belongs to the private: Leo is due to meet survivors of clergy sexual abuse in a closed session. That scheduling choice is itself a statement, placing the institutional reckoning with abuse not as an appendix to a triumphant visit but as one of its two central pillars.

The private audience is the most closely watched element of the trip. The sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the Catholic Church in several countries — including France — has forced successive papacies to confront questions of accountability, transparency and the protection of minors, and the Vatican's handling of the issue has been a persistent source of criticism. For abuse survivors, a meeting with the pope carries weight that cannot be reduced to symbolism; for the Church, it is a test of whether words of consolation can be matched by visible action. Whether any survivors speak publicly, whether the meeting produces any concrete commitments, and who is in the room are all likely to be closely reported.

The visit also comes at a delicate moment for unity within the Church. France 24's analysis of the trip notes that a schism involving an ultra-conservative traditionalist Catholic sect — coverage of the visit identified the group as the SSPX — has cast a pall over the journey. A papal visit to France is inevitably as much about the state of internal Catholic debate as it is about relations between the Holy See and the French state, and the presence of dissenters who reject the pontiff's authority complicates any message of unity that the four-day programme is meant to convey.

For the French, the trip carries its own resonance. France's relationship with the papacy is ancient and, at times, fraught, and the fact that no official state visit had taken place for nearly two decades made the arrival feel like an event of some consequence even before the Paris Mass. Coming at a moment when the French Church is still working through the consequences of the abuse scandal, the itinerary — a stadium vigil, a Mass before hundreds of thousands, a Marian shrine and a meeting with victims — amounts to a deliberate balancing act between celebration and contrition.

Sunday's events will also offer a gauge of the deeper mood among French Catholics. Lourdes has a long history of hosting large, emotionally charged gatherings, and the presence of the pope tends to bring out a cross-section of the faithful that is broader and younger than the typical Sunday congregation. Whether that turnout converts into anything lasting for the Church in France will depend heavily on the follow-up that neither the Vatican nor the French bishops can easily control once the cameras leave.

Beyond the religious dimensions, the visit is a communications exercise with global reach. Leo's choice of name, his election in 2025 and his relatively recent assumption of the office have left him still defining his papacy, and a large, well-covered visit to one of Catholicism's most symbolic sites gives him a platform that is unambiguously favourable. The same platform carries risk, of course, since any mishandling of the abuse meeting or any sign of internal division will be photographed and broadcast with equal enthusiasm.

Attention now turns to what happens after the sanctuary Mass concludes. Leo's meeting with abuse victims in the afternoon is expected to be without public coverage, which means the assessment of how it went will depend on remarks released by the Vatican and on the accounts of those who were present. The remainder of the four-day programme, and the pope's eventual departure from France, will complete a visit that has already succeeded in one measurable respect: it has put perhaps close to a million people in physical attendance at its events.

Coverage of the day is being provided by France 24 in collaboration with AP, AFP and Reuters, with rolling updates available throughout. For those following at a distance, the enduring image of Leo's French visit is likely to be not the vast Paris crowd but the smaller, quieter figure of a pope kneeling at a Marian grotto, praying for a country whose Catholic establishment he is simultaneously asking to reckon with its past.