Pope Leo XIV used a four-day visit to France to criticize abortion, euthanasia and surrogacy while defending the role of Catholic schools and religious voices in public life.
The Sept. 25–28 trip comes as France grapples with two major changes: President Emmanuel Macron’s government added abortion to the Constitution in 2024, and the country recently enacted a law legalizing assisted dying. Speaking in French at the Élysée Palace on Friday, Leo — an American whose grandmother was French — warned that scientific advances can promise too much when separated from broader moral judgment.
🚨 The Champs Elysee is completely FULL
This is unbelievable
The people have France have turned out in their hundreds of thousands to see Pope Leo XIV, the atmosphere is electric pic.twitter.com/ebn52jHQbS
— Catholic Arena (@CatholicArena) September 26, 2026
Modern society, he said, often expects science to eliminate or ease suffering, a hope that “often brings the risk of self-delusion.” Science and technology can offer “immediate solutions that apparently address people’s wishes and their pain” without serving the common good, he said. He cited concerns about the commercialization of genetic manipulation, surrogacy and organ trafficking, as well as “the possibility of arranging one’s own death.”
Leo said respect for one another and the defense of every human life remain obligations for all. At UNESCO headquarters, he returned to the subject, saying “the human person is someone who is conceived and born.”
The pope also challenged France’s strict tradition of separating religion from public life. A Christian public official whose conscience is shaped by faith, he said, should not automatically be treated as a proselytizer or a threat to national unity. Authentic secularism, he said, “does not exclude religion but is capable of valuing it as an educational resource.” The state and religious institutions, he argued, should remain in dialogue and serve the common good.
Leo defended Catholic schools as places that help students understand and value themselves and learn to encounter others — capacities he described as essential to communication. He also praised French and Church efforts to support Christians in the Middle East, pointed to Christianity’s influence on French arts and culture, warned about artificial intelligence and called for peace. He rejected the idea that nuclear weapons can provide genuine security.
Macron did not attend a Mass celebrated by the pope. Leo declined a state dinner and a joint visit to Notre-Dame, citing a full schedule. Some reports also connected the decision to France’s new assisted-dying law.
Closing his Élysée address, Leo invoked France’s motto, “liberty, equality and fraternity.” They “are not simply words emblazoned on the front of your public buildings,” he said, but “refer to universal ethical imperatives that also find in the Gospel message an inexhaustible source of inspiration and fulfillment.”
France recorded more than 21,000 adult baptisms during this year’s Easter season, a record and an increase of roughly 20 percent from the previous year. Leo noted that the growth occurred in “a deeply secularized culture.” The converts’ accounts, he said, reflect a grace that statistics cannot measure and challenge the “sterile pessimism” once criticized by Pope Francis.
A recent poll found that one-fifth of the French population wanted to see the pope. The Grand Mosque of Paris devoted its Friday sermon to the visit and values shared by Christians and Muslims. Leo’s itinerary continues with a stop at the Marian shrine of Lourdes and a Mass in Metz.
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