Pope Leo Arrives in Lourdes for Second Leg of France Visit
The pontiff prayed for leaders who defend human rights and peace, and seven victims of clerical sex abuse will meet him Sept. 27, the Vatican said.
- On September 26, Pope Leo XIV arrived at the holy shrine in Lourdes, France, marking the first official papal visit to the secular nation in nearly two decades.
- Lourdes welcomes some three million pilgrims annually to the sanctuary where Catholic tradition holds the Virgin Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in 1858; Leo is the third pope to visit after Benedict XVI and Jean-Paul II.
- Earlier, Pope Leo led an emotional mass at Paris' Place de la Concorde, where some 800,000 worshippers gathered; President Emmanuel Macron was represented by his wife Brigitte alongside political figures Marine Le Pen and Edouard Philippe.
- Ahead of the April-May presidential election, the pontiff prayed for "wise and generous leaders... eager to serve the common good" and visited migrants at Maison Bakhita to promote peace and dignity.
- On September 27, Pope Leo will meet privately with seven victims of clerical sex abuse, addressing findings from a 2021 inquiry that revealed Church members abused about 330,000 people as minors in France over seven decades.
21 Articles
21 Articles
Pope Leo arrives in Lourdes for Second Leg of France Visit
Leo opened his pilgrimage in Lourdes with a prayer at the Grotto of the Apparitions, the site where Catholics believe the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous in 1858 and one of the faith's most-visited shrines.
Upon his arrival at the grotto of apparitions, the Holy Father raised a prayer to the Virgin
They are still thousands to wait for him in front of the Shrine of Lourdes for a new moment of recollection. Leo XIV landed near this high place of pilgrimage. Saturday night, the pope will go to this cave where, in the nineteenth century, Bernadette Soubirous would have seen the Virgin Mary on eighteen occasions. After the two spectacular days spent in Paris, marked by strong times at Notre-Dame and on the Champs-Élysées, a brand new stage begi…
Just arrived in the Marian city, the Supreme Pontiff went to the heart of the sanctuary, to pray to the Virgin at the cave of Massabielle, ...
Faithful to the vocation of Lourdes as a refuge for those who suffer, the Pontiff dedicated the core of his visit to entrusting the intentions of the fr...
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