by Serre Verweij
Pope Leo actively sought to make this visit about the promotion of the faith rather than partisan politics, and in this he succeeded. Yet he clearly chose also to convey the Church's moral teachings in a country where left and right have been defined since 1789 precisely by their rejection or defense of those teachings. Ethical debates and attacks on the Church are increasingly prominent in the controversies building toward France's elections next year. Indirect political implications were therefore unavoidable.
A Firm Pro-Life Message
Pope Leo's visit to France continues a pattern he established in Monaco and Spain: traveling to a historically Catholic nation that has recently legalized — or is at risk of legalizing — abortion or euthanasia, in order to proclaim a clear pro-life message. But in no previous apostolic journey was that message as dominant as it was in France.
He condemned euthanasia repeatedly, both when addressing French officials and at Lourdes. From UNESCO to his address on Europe's roots, he spoke consistently on behalf of the unborn, of human life at every stage, and of its protection from conception to natural death. Surrogacy was called out by name as well.
Pope Leo's message was decidedly weighted toward conservatism — in defense of life and of the Church's liberties against such evils as abortion, euthanasia, and surrogacy. Migration barely featured in most of his addresses. Even when he visited a Church center that cares for migrants, his remarks focused largely on charity rather than on welcoming foreigners. The only significant statement on the matter came when he spoke of Europe's roots, emphasizing both the importance of protecting refugees and forced migrants from human trafficking and of enabling safe pathways and integration for the duration of their stay — while not ruling out the possibility of forced repatriation. This stands in stark contrast not only to Francis, who pushed migration positions too far to the left even for Macron and was largely mocked as out of touch, but also to Leo's own approach in Spain, where the humane treatment of refugees occupied a far more central place. This suggests that Leo found the migration issue less relevant in France — which is not a transit nation where genuine refugees risk dying at sea — and that he is far less committed to promoting open-border policies as such.
In his emphasis on European unity, Leo once again invoked the continent's Christian past and highlighted the founding values of the EEC rather than those of the current European Union. He championed European unity without attacking national sovereignty, nationalism, or populism.
There was a desperate attempt by certain progressive commentators to read a pro-migrant interpretation into Leo's first address, as he spoke of the diverse origins and the religious and cultural identities of the French people. But later in that same address Leo made explicit that this diversity reaches back centuries and is Christian in origin. France was originally a nation of Celtic Gauls, with Greek settlements in the South and Britons along the northwestern coast, formed by Roman civilization and then taken over by Germanic Franks who embraced Catholicism and built the French state. It was the nation where Jansenists arose and clashed with Jesuits. It has no need of Islam or of African immigration to possess a rich and diverse social fabric.
Beyond abortion and euthanasia, Pope Leo's most prominent ethical theme was peace. He again championed multilateralism and international law, but this time emphasized that international law derives primarily from the keeping of promises rather than from the authority of powerful supranational institutions. Somewhat surprisingly, Pope Leo went so far as to reject a naive pacifism.
His message has constituted a strong, if indirect, criticism of Macron, of the French left, and of the radicals, socialists, Greens, and Communists who recently pushed through legal euthanasia and the constitutional enshrining of the liberty to abortion — while his words and gestures have given virtually no ammunition to French nationalist conservatives or reactionaries such as Zemmour.
Leo's Reading of French History
Beyond the strong pro-life message, Leo's addresses in France deserve particular attention in light of the complicated history of anti-Catholic persecution that began with the French Revolution. The French Republic is inherently steeped in anti-Catholicism and in the radical Enlightenment and Freemasonic ideas from which it sprang.
In confronting this past, Pope Leo had an opportunity to improve upon his namesake and predecessor Leo XIII, who had abandoned French royalism and made an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile Catholics to the French Republic in hopes of ending its anticlericalism. On this point, it appears that Pope Leo XIV may well have succeeded where Leo XIII did not.
The Pope both confronted the legacy of the Revolution head-on and sidestepped it simultaneously in his first address, by plunging deeply into France's history. He traced France's story back to its early Christianization at the dawn of the Middle Ages, tied Renaissance Humanism to Christianity and to ancient Roman and Greek cultures, praised the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries of the ancien régime and the Grand Siècle — and then stopped there, refusing to praise or even acknowledge the French Revolution or the five republics that grew from it.
He did praise the Enlightenment's promotion of human rights and human dignity, specifically religious freedom, but then asserted that the French Republican slogan of liberté, égalité, fraternité expresses ideals that have their basis in Christianity. This closely parallels the way Pope Leo argued that America's founding ideals had their roots in Christianity rather than merely in the Enlightenment, and it is consistent with what Leo XIII taught regarding true liberty rightly ordered.
The address leaves some room for French secularists to interpret it as an indirect acknowledgment of the ideals of the Revolution and an attempt to reconcile them with Christianity — or Christianity with them. It could be read as an appeal for a mild Christian democratic tradition rather than the selective weaponization of the Republic's slogans against the progressive left and secular forces. Yet other parts of the address, and many of Leo's gestures throughout the trip, as well as his broader record, make this reading unlikely.
While Leo praised human rights, he did not champion the ideals of democracy. His defense of religious freedom once again focused on the protection of the rights of Catholics in France — analogous to how his previous references to religious freedom upheld Catholic rights in Islamic countries. He argued that authentic secularism would not exclude religion, and that Catholics in public service who are guided by their faith cannot constitute a threat to national unity. He also defended Catholic schools at a moment when leading Freemasons have made the banning of those schools a central issue for next year's elections. All of his arguments were a defense of the Church against the anti-Catholic French left.
As a result, while Pope Leo did not state it explicitly, the entire tenor of his historical narrative suggests he was gesturing toward the "moderate" Enlightenment rather than the "radical" Enlightenment — toward Montesquieu rather than Diderot or De Sade.
Religious freedom — or perhaps more accurately, religious tolerance in practice — in fact predates the French Revolution in France. While anti-Catholic historians tend to focus on King Louis XIV's persecution of Huguenots in the later part of his reign, that was in reality a reversal of nearly a century of tolerance that had begun with the Edict of Nantes in 1598 under King Henry IV. The basic civil rights and freedoms of Huguenots were in fact restored by King Louis XVI in 1787 through the Edict of Versailles, before the Revolution, allowing them to be legally registered, to marry, to regulate inheritance, and to receive justice under the law. This was not religious indifferentism, however. Catholicism remained the state religion; only Catholics could hold public office and teaching positions, while Protestants were required to pay the tithe and to observe Catholic marriage law.
Pope Leo XIV's praise for Monaco's retention of Catholicism as the state religion makes it considerably more probable that this is his model of enlightened French religious freedom — rather than the Revolution that claimed to fight for religious freedom and human rights while murdering Catholics in the name of liberty.
Pope Leo specifically declined Republican-tinted honors, including the participation of the Republican Guard in official events and the offer of the Légion d'honneur. He likewise declined Macron's request to accompany him into Notre-Dame.
Any lingering doubt that Pope Leo was reconciling the Church to the French Revolution should have been definitively dispelled when he celebrated Mass at the Place de la Concorde — the very square where King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette were executed. Pope Leo also paid specific tribute to the priests who were martyred during the French Revolution.
The past was, and is, remembered.
Controversies over Traditionalism Avoided; Young Converts Supported
The one overarching issue that Pope Leo has so far sidestepped entirely is traditionalism and the Tridentine Mass. He has said nothing on it in either direction. Although he did twice promote the conservative reading of Vatican II on the liturgy and call for it to be celebrated with dignity and reverence at Notre-Dame, with respect for the tradition that has been handed down — something America Magazine and a handful of commentators attempted to interpret as subtle pushback against traditionalists. There was likewise no reference to the SSPX, which originated in France.
His encouragement to subordinate personal preferences to unity with the Successor of Saint Peter is difficult to interpret as an anti-TLM signal, given that he instructed French bishops earlier this year to be generous toward traditionalists.
Crucially, he has been nothing but unhesitatingly supportive of the trend of new converts, of the recruitment of new priests, and of outgoing evangelization in France — all of which, in the French context, have become disproportionately traditionalist in character and have made progressives increasingly wary of the convert phenomenon.
While liberal and lukewarm Catholics view this trend with suspicion, Pope Leo promoted new vocations in France and called on bishops to support new priests. The days of Francis's anticlerical tirades are over. Pope Leo endorsed traditional devotions, pilgrimages, and Mariology, and preached old-fashioned sermons on sin, repentance, and the need for the grace of God. The journey looked like a journey back in time even as it looked toward the future with hope.
As a footnote: synodality was treated as a footnote during the trip, despite Leo's meeting with and addressing people who hold leading roles in France's synodal process.
