Vatican News: France awaits Pope Leo
On the eve of Pope Leo XIV’s arrival in Paris, Vatican News Correspondent Deborah Castellano Lubov reports from outside the Cathedral of Notre Dame to share the great excitement in France for the Pope’s imminent arrival, and great emotion after the devastating 2019 fire.
There is so much excitement as Paris prepares to welcome Pope Leo XIV in less than a day’s time.
The Holy Father lands tomorrow morning in the French capital to begin his fifth Apostolic Journey abroad, following that in Spain in June and ahead of that to Latin America in November.
Pope Leo’s intense four-day visit will take him from Paris to a ‘pilgrimage’ to Lourdes, and finally Metz in eastern France.
In Paris, pilgrims are arriving from across France and beyond, volunteers are carrying out their work with care and dedication, the international press has gathered, and security measures have visibly intensified around key venues.
Inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame, every last detail was being prepared with love.
Everywhere you turned your head, you could see each person doing their part for this incredible moment, which will mark the first time a Pope will have been in the beloved Gothic Cathedral known throughout the world since the devastating fire in April 2019.
Pope Leo will be welcomed to Notre-Dame, which has risen and been brought back to life when many feared it never could, and there he will preside over solemn Vespers in the restored Notre-Dame Cathedral with bishops, priests, deacons and their wives, consecrated men and women, and seminarians from across France.
Later on in the day, the Pope will join thousands of young people at the Stade de France for a prayer vigil, and young people have already been sharing their excitement to spend that time with the Pope.
The days ahead will then see the Holy Father celebrate Mass at Place de la Concorde and along the Champs-Élysées.
In Lourdes, the Pope will pray at the Grotto of Massabielle and celebrate Mass with pilgrims, before traveling to Metz, where he will deliver a message of peace and celebrate Mass in Saint Stephen’s Cathedral.
While religious practice has declined in recent decades in France, which had long been called the ‘eldest daughter of the Church’, Church leaders have pointed to the fact that there is a renewed interest in the faith, especially among young people and adults.
Many are seeking meaning, and are finding it in the faith, they suggest, adding their belief that Pope Leo’s visit will certainly be a moment of faith that can last far beyond the visit.
I wonder aloud, given the surprising great numbers that are attending Pope Leo’s visit in Paris this weekend. Is there a danger in how these numbers will be interpreted by the Irish Church at the national Synodal meeting on Saturday October 17th – that there is no need for change – keep going as we are and they will come back! This mentality already exists here among some of the Bishops and certain groups. Some are very smug at interpreting the recent Survey (Rural Ireland Thinks) results and don’t seem too concerned.
And France is not Ireland!? The separation of Church and State in France has been healthy and makes for a clearer identity for Catholics whilst the opposite is the situation here in Ireland.
Pope Leo pointed out last night in Paris that the ‘Christian community is not a refuge into which we withdraw in order to protect ourselves from our age. On the contrary, like the cathedrals of old, the Church is a place of welcome, respect, revelation and meaning for people’.
Seamus Aherne, in his latest article, has outlined how unwelcoming our complicated English language Liturgies are and that they are out of touch with ordinary people.
Falsifying the prediction of a book called “Towards Implosion?” a few years ago, France has experienced a strong Catholic revival (what Newman would call an effusion of the Holy Spirit), which is emerging in full visibility in the papal fever now gripping the nation. Emmanuel Macron deserves a lot of credit for this, for the way he took the fire at Notre-Dame in hand and rebuilt the cathedral in 5 years. The lavish spectacles laid on for Pope Leo recall great royal visits of the Renaissance and must have been enormously expensive. The enthusiasm seems to be unbroken — with no hint of “the last hurrah”, as some described our papal visit of 1979. (Pope Francis’s visit was a non-event. Better go the whole hog than clutter the papal schedule with cursory or token events.) Ireland might well experience a similar effusion, if the sleeping forces of its Catholic tradition are allowed to be awakened.
Is this fuss about Leo an anti-Trump phenomenon also, a yearning for some kind of deeper hopeful truth – to reject the corrupt hurricane of lies that blows from the Oval Office?
That Leo is an American who stands for recognition of all the dangers out there, including mendacity, narcissism, ecocide, military brutishness, the fetishisation of technology, denial and corruption – the whole cesspit of Trumpian vices and stupidities – is a phenomenon in itself. To pay any attention to anyone other than Trump is, in Trump’s eyes, to snub him – and that could be part of the point of turning out for Leo – in a kind of ‘forget Trump’ euphoria.
You may have a point Sean. It is amazing how Trump brought Canadians together.
AI used the word eucatastrophe a word coined by J.R.R. Tolkien meaning a dramatic turn from catastrophe to a happy ending. Maybe we can see a dimmer of light at the end of the tunnel bringing us a little hope.
Yes. The.church is backward on some issues but overall it stands for welcome Common Sense. Le canard enchaine notes that the church spent much more in 4 days on the papal visit than in thirty years on abuse victims.