In Metz, Pope Leo steps into Europe’s deepening divide over immigration
METZ, France — The hot-button issue of immigration has invited itself into Pope Leo XIV’s first apostolic journey to France, otherwise marked by the defense of human life and the remarkable signs of Catholic revival currently emerging across the country. It could provide one of the most revealing indications yet of how the American pope intends to address a deeply divided Europe.
As Leo prepares to reach Metz, at the crossroads of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, what message can he offer a continent increasingly torn between the Christian imperative to welcome the stranger and growing concerns over the social, cultural, and security consequences of mass immigration?
The balance is particularly difficult to strike, not least for a pope whose experience has been largely shaped by Latin America, where migration raises different demographic and civilizational challenges than in Europe. So far, he has combined strong continuity with Pope Francis’ defense of migrants and a more explicit recognition of the rights of nations, the demands of integration, and the concerns of receiving societies.
It is against this backdrop that Leo is traveling to Metz on Sept. 28 for an interreligious meeting, followed by an address on the “Roots of Europe for Peace and Unity” at the Robert Schuman Conference Centre. He already sent a strong international signal by visiting Maison Bakhita, a Paris center for migrants, on Sept. 26, just one day before the World Day of Migrants and Refugees.
At Europe’s crossroads
More than a decade after the 2015 migration crisis, immigration has become one of the defining fault lines of European politics — and increasingly of European Catholicism itself.
That year alone, more than 1.2 million people applied for asylum in the European Union, and migration pressures have remained a major continental issue ever since, with political repercussions still unfolding.
In the weeks preceding Leo’s arrival in Metz, the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) scored two historic victories in regional elections, while in France, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National is already well ahead of its rivals in polls for the 2027 presidential election.
The term “remigration” itself, once largely confined to fringe circles, has entered the European political vocabulary, as illustrated by the large-scale “Save Europe Act” campaign, which advocates an end to mass immigration and a policy of remigration. It has already gathered some 750,000 signatures and sparked a confrontation with the European Commission over its attempted registration as a European Citizens’ Initiative.
These mounting tensions are increasingly reflected within the Church itself. While identitarian Catholic voices and platforms have gained visibility on social media, much of the Catholic hierarchy has continued to place strong emphasis on the duty to welcome migrants.
In Germany, Catholic bishops have also repeatedly warned against the AfD and the growing appeal of “remigration,” while Cardinal Gerhard Müller, following the party’s historic victory in Saxony-Anhalt this month, accused bishops of misusing their spiritual authority by intervening in partisan politics and thereby alienating Catholic AfD voters.
In Italy, meanwhile, Archbishop Giancarlo Perego, head of the bishops’ migration commission, recently accused Giorgia Meloni’s government of placing “borders before people.”
France has been marked by equally heated Catholic debates on the issue over the past decade.
In “Église et immigration: le grand malaise,” published in 2017, conservative writer Laurent Dandrieu accused Church leaders of reducing Catholic teaching to an almost exclusive imperative of welcome while neglecting the major upheavals experienced by local communities.
More recently, Father Benoist de Sinety, in “La Cause du Christ,” attacked the opposite temptation of instrumentalizing Christianity in the service of identitarian politics.
A column published this month in La Nef magazine challenged what it regarded as a false choice between Christian hospitality and attachment to one’s cultural inheritance.
A ‘rupture’ with the previous pontificate?
Pope Leo, however, seems sensitive to the nuances demanded by this growing polarization. While maintaining the firm defense of migrants that characterized Francis’ pontificate, he has also given unusual prominence to the responsibilities of migrants and the legitimate concerns of the societies that receive them.
Barely a month after his election, Leo prayed at Pentecost that the Holy Spirit might “open borders, break down walls,” and overcome the “logic of exclusion” of political nationalisms. Yet, while supporting the U.S. bishops’ opposition to President Donald Trump’s mass deportation policies last November, he stated unequivocally that “every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter,” rejecting the idea that states should have open borders.
This drive for balance was reaffirmed during his visit to the Canary Islands in June, when he invoked the “right not to have to migrate,” warned against the creation of “parallel worlds,” and asserted that host societies must be able to welcome newcomers without “diluting their identity.”
This language has led some Catholic observers, including French Vatican analyst Jean-Marie Guénois, to speak of a “rupture” with his predecessor on immigration. But his approach appears less a break than an attempt to better articulate a tension already present in Catholic doctrine.
A delicate balance
Indeed, the Catechism of the Catholic Church itself holds together principles that are often separated in today’s debate. It asks wealthier nations to welcome foreigners seeking security and vital resources “to the extent they are able,” while affirming that political authorities may regulate immigration for the sake of the common good. Migrants, in turn, are called to respect the laws as well as the “material and spiritual heritage” of their host country (No. 2241).
The Catholic Church therefore establishes moral obligations without prescribing minimum or maximum thresholds. Such teaching inevitably requires prudential judgments concerning integration, security, social cohesion, and the common good — precisely the areas over which Catholics today are most deeply divided.
At a time when Europe’s migration debate is hardening and divisions are deepening to the point of threatening the unity of the Church, the question is no longer simply whether Catholics should welcome the stranger or defend the continuity of nations and cultures. It is whether the Church can speak credibly both to Europeans who feel dispossessed of their future and to the migrant who, more often than not, does not know Christ.
Leo’s address at the “Roots of Europe” conference may offer a first indication of how he intends to navigate between these two realities in an increasingly tense European context.
Killing the sick is ‘false compassion,’ pope says in Lourdes
LOURDES, France — Killing the sick is neither compassionate nor normal, and being legal does not make it moral, Pope Leo XIV said Sunday, in a clear reference to France’s recent legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
“I know that for some of you, because of particular illnesses and, at times, terrible pain, your horizon may appear dark, uncertain and without hope. But no human law should ever make you lose the certainty of your dignity,” the pope said during a meeting with about 5,000 sick people and caregivers at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes on Sept. 27.
“It is precisely in the name of this inalienable dignity of the human person that we must reject the temptation to cause death under the guise of false compassion,” the pontiff added to loud applause. “It is impossible to regard causing death as something normal. What is legal is not necessarily moral.”
The popeʼs remarks on end-of-life concerns were met with applause and shouts of “Bravo.”
France legalized assisted suicide and euthanasia this summer, becoming the fifth European country to do so after Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Spain. In addition, Switzerland and Austria permit assisted suicide.
Euthanasia is the intentional ending of a person’s life to relieve suffering. It differs from assisted dying, in which the patient takes life-ending drugs himself, under a physician’s guidance. Both practices are prohibited by Catholic teaching.
Leo met Sept. 27 with staff and sick guests of the Accueil Notre-Dame (Notre Dame Home), a residential accommodation classified as a healthcare facility, which hosts sick, disabled, and frail pilgrims to Lourdes.
The Catholic shrine is one of the most visited in the world, drawing more than 3 million people every year, many in search of miraculous physical healing.
The 136-acre property includes the Grotto of Massabielle, where a young St. Bernadette Soubirous saw 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary starting on Feb. 11, 1858. Today, pilgrims to the sanctuary bathe themselves in the freshwater spring Mary revealed to Bernadette.
Visitors have reported 7,000 healings since the apparitions; after lengthy investigations, the Church has declared that 72 of the recoveries were miraculous, meaning unexplainable by science.
“Here in Lourdes, the city of the sick and of hope, I appeal to the entire healthcare community to remember the profound meaning of your vocation, which is to care for a suffering person, not to eliminate that person,” Pope Leo said.
He encouraged healthcare workers to be “passionate servants of life” and cited his speech to the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation in June, in which he said, "no one ever has the right, “on the basis of laboratory algorithms, to decide the life of a given embryo or elderly person! Medicine must never become the servant of programmed death!”
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Earlier in the morning, the pope addressed the French bishops’ conference, praising the bishops’ courage in opposing the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
“I encourage you to persevere, together with all people of good will who uphold the same values,” he told the bishops.
In his remarks to the sick and caregivers, Leo called for structures for palliative care and urged the healthcare field to accompany the sick with the same tenderness they receive in Lourdes.
“Doctors, nurses, stretcher-bearers, chaplains, pastoral teams serving the sick, and so many others live out their vocation in the service of the dignity of the human person, so that the world may have life,” he said.
“Dear brothers and sisters who are sick,” he concluded, “I want to tell you that you are not a burden. You are the beating heart of our humanity and a precious treasure for the Church. I carry in my prayers the trials you are going through.”
Immediately after the meeting, the pope walked next door to greet the Discalced Carmelite nuns whose monastery faces the grotto of the apparitions from across the river Gave de Pau. The contemplative monastery was founded in 1876, just 18 years after Mary appeared to St. Bernadette.
For Iraq’s Christians, Archbishop Warda says long-term stability requires jobs
For Christians in Iraq, remaining in their historic homeland increasingly depends not only on security but also on whether younger generations can find meaningful work and build stable lives, according to Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil.
In an interview with ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News, Warda said education, professional formation, and sustainable employment have become essential to strengthening Christian communities at a time when economic pressures continue to weigh heavily on young Iraqis.
The challenge is particularly significant for Christians because their numbers have declined considerably in recent decades, leaving smaller communities more vulnerable to economic pressures.
Speaking at the Catholic University of Erbil, Warda pointed to the structure of Iraq’s economy as part of the problem. Government spending and public-sector employment continue to play an outsized role, while the private sector has yet to generate enough sustainable jobs to meet the needs of a young and growing workforce.
A difficult transition from education to employment
World Bank data indicate that the country’s unemployment rate stands at 15.5%, while labor force participation is around 38%.
Demographics add another layer to the challenge: Iraqis between the ages of 15 and 29 make up approximately 29% of the population, placing continued pressure on the labor market.
The countryʼs heavy dependence on oil also affects its ability to generate employment. Oil accounted for approximately 88% of government revenue and 91% of merchandise exports in 2025, leaving the economy exposed to fluctuations in energy prices and revenues.
Against that backdrop, Warda said preparing young people for employment requires more than helping them earn university degrees. Education, he said, must also provide the practical and professional skills needed in an increasingly competitive labor market, particularly as opportunities for government employment become more limited.
He pointed to university students who take night jobs to finance their education as an example of both the pressures facing young Iraqis and their determination to pursue a future through work.
For Warda, their experience also demonstrates that young people are prepared to take responsibility when meaningful opportunities are available.
Moving beyond emergency assistance
Warda praised the support that Aid to the Church in Need provides through scholarships but said the challenge does not end when students graduate.
Helping young Christians move from education into employment, he said, must become a greater priority for the Church and other institutions seeking to sustain Iraqʼs Christian presence.
That requires a broader change in approach: from responding primarily to immediate needs to creating the conditions in which families and young people can become economically independent.
Warda called for greater investment in people, professional formation, employment, and projects capable of strengthening the private sector and providing young Iraqis with viable alternatives to dependence on government jobs.
The Chaldean Catholic Archdiocese of Erbil has sought to follow that model through a network of educational, academic, healthcare, media, and humanitarian institutions.
Creating opportunities through Church institutions
Warda said institutions connected to the archdiocese currently employ approximately 950 people from different communities and backgrounds without discrimination. Yet he raised the question of whether even that number is enough when measured against the scale of the economic challenges facing Iraqi society and, in particular, its Christian communities.
For Warda, expanding sustainable employment will require partnerships and investment beyond what Church institutions can accomplish on their own.
He argued that the Churchʼs response should therefore be rooted not simply in charitable assistance but in justice, human dignity, and empowerment.
The ultimate purpose of assistance, he said, should be to give people the skills and opportunities they need to support themselves and their families rather than allowing short-term assistance to become a source of permanent dependence.
For Iraqʼs Christians, that approach places economic opportunity alongside education as an important part of the effort to preserve a living Christian presence in the country, one in which young people can see a future for themselves and their families in their homeland.
This story was first published by ACI MENA, the Arabic-language sister service of EWTN News. It has been translated and adapted by EWTN News English.
Pope Leo in Lourdes: The Church must heal her ‘wounds, infidelities, and painful errors’
LOURDES, France — Pope Leo XIV issued a firm call to conversion from sin and error in the Church, and invited all to repent and do penance, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes on Sunday.
Mary’s call to conversion in her message to St. Bernadette “also concerns the Church herself as she makes her earthly journey. She must have the courage to begin with herself,” he said at Mass on Sept. 27.
“In order to heal the deep wounds, infidelities and painful errors that have occurred within her, we must humbly place ourselves under the Lord’s purifying gaze. Recognizing our own faults is essential to our spiritual growth,” the pontiff said.
In 2021, the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (CIASE) published a nearly 2,500-page final report, estimating that 216,000 children were abused by priests, deacons, monks, or nuns in France from 1950 to 2020.
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Leo is scheduled to meet later on Sunday with seven victims of clerical sexual abuse in France.
Lourdes is an evocative backdrop to the private meeting, since it is among the first shrines to cover artwork by the accused sexual abuser Father Marko Rupnik, currently on trial at the Vatican.
Rupnik’s mosaics decorating the front of the Basilica of the Rosary were covered ahead of Leo’s visit and will remain covered indefinitely, according to the local bishop.
The pope celebrated Mass on a prairie across the river Gave de Pau from the grotto of the apparitions on the third day of his Sept. 25-28 visit to France.
Pilgrims from France and around the world gathered on the grassy hill and along the streets of the shrine. Some waved flags or held banners of sacred images. A number of pilgrims arrived in wheelchairs. Around 150,000 people attended the Mass, according to the Vatican.
Claire Banks, a nurse from the UK, said she has traveled over 100 times to Lourdes.
“It was too good of an opportunity to miss coming here and seeing the pope. I think he’s wonderful,” she told EWTN News. She described an “electric atmosphere” at the shrine since Leo’s arrival.
Libby Frank, another Mass attendee, is also from the UK, but has lived in Lourdes for 40 years. She recently retired after working for a charity that brings sick people to the shrine.
“I worked for three papal visits and now I’ve come to one papal visit to enjoy it with my family and friends and just be part of the community,” she said, referencing two visits by St. Pope John Paul II in 1983 and 2004, and one by Pope Benedict in 2008.
“There’s been a phenomenal amount of excitement locally waiting for Leo to come visit. The town [of Lourdes] has really gotten behind everything that’s happening,” she said.
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The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is among the most popular Catholic shrines in the world, built on the site of Mary’s apparitions to St. Bernadette in 1858. It is particularly visited by the sick, who come to bathe in or drink its healing spring water.
In his homily, Pope Leo noted that a “call to conversion, both tender and urgent,” was a central part of the message the Virgin Mary entrusted to Bernadette, and that “it is today, not tomorrow, that we must repent.”
He said Jesus is quite direct about the call to repentance: “As St. Luke tells us, ‘Unless you repent, you will all perish.’ But he also extends our horizon beyond this earthly life to the horizon of eternal life.”
“Did not the Virgin Mary say to St. Bernadette, ‘I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the next’?” Leo said.
The pope noted that we can often forget this in an age and society focused on progress and material wellbeing.
Eternal life is already won for us by Jesus’ sacrifice, he continued, but “the obstacle to grace and eternal life — the only obstacle to this love — is sin.”
The Holy Father called everyone to do penance, an act of love for God and for our brothers and sisters, “who do not heed this call to conversion, and whose sins lead them towards death.”
“We want to make amends for the wounds our sins have dealt to [God’s] heart,” he said.
Addressing the many sick, elderly, and disabled people present at the Mass, Leo said their suffering, if lived in a “spirit of offering,” can take part “in the redemptive work that the world so greatly needs.”
“In this way, you are truly at the heart of the Church, and your role is irreplaceable,” he said.
“In the face of current trends that seek to redefine the value of human life in illness, suffering and old age, the grotto of Massabielle stands as a place of Christian hope,” he said. “Here, no one is turned away due to their frailty.”
Earlier in the morning, Leo met with France’s bishops at the shrine, where he praised their courage in opposing the recent legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide in the country.
“I encourage you to persevere, together with all people of good will who uphold the same values,” he told the bishops’ conference.
At the end of Mass, before praying the Angelus, the pope invited those present to pray the rosary for peace, and to offer concrete acts of penance and mercy.
“It was here that the Immaculate Virgin appeared to St. Bernadette with the rosary and, as it were, guided her in prayer,” he said. “For this reason, today I invite all the faithful and all Christian communities to pray the holy rosary throughout the coming month of October, with the particular intention that wars may cease and that peace may be established among peoples in conflict.”
Elliot Hartley contributed to this report.
This story was updated at 7:14 a.m. ET with more information about the Mass and the pope’s meeting with bishops.
LIVE UPDATES: Pope Leo XIV in France
PHOTOS: Pope Leo XIV visits Paris and Lourdes on second day of France trip
Pope Leo XIV continued his apostolic journey in France on Saturday, first listening to the stories of migrants at the Bakhita House, a center offering support and integration to immigrants in the Archdiocese of Paris, before meeting with new and prospective Catholics and their leaders at the Catholic Institute of Paris.
He then made his way to Place de la Concorde, where he greeted a crowd of more than 800,000 people and celebrated Mass. He then ended the evening at the Lourdes shrine, where he led a short prayer service before spending several minutes in private prayer.
Here’s a recap of the pope’s day in photos:
Illinois bishop announces first-ever parish to be named after Blessed Fulton Sheen
Bishop Louis Tylka of the Diocese of Peoria, Illinois, announced at the end of a Mass celebrated on Saturday the first-ever parish named for Blessed Fulton Sheen.
The combined parish of St. Mary in El Paso, Illinois — where Sheen was baptized — and St. John in Benson, Illinois, will be the first parish in the world to be named after the new blessed. While the buildings themselves will retain their original names, the new parish name will take effect on Dec. 9, Sheen’s feast day, Tylka said.
“This has been a remarkable week of firsts for the Diocese of Peoria and the universal Catholic Church,” Tylka said in a statement released later on Sept. 26. “We have celebrated Archbishop Fulton Sheen becoming the first American-born bishop to be declared Blessed. For the first time, we have heard his name invoked as a Blessed in the Eucharistic Prayer. For the first time, we have prayed the Collect given to the Church for his feast. And today, I have the great joy of announcing another first: the establishment of the first parish in the world named Blessed Fulton Sheen Parish.”
The Sept. 26 Mass — celebrated by Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, who was baptized as a baby by Sheen — was one of many celebrated in thanksgiving for the beatification of Sheen, who was declared “blessed” on Sept. 24 in St. Louis.
“There is something profoundly fitting about this new parish carrying his name,” Tylka continued in the statement. “It was at St. Mary Church in El Paso that Fulton John Sheen was baptized. There, his life in Christ began. From those waters of Baptism flowed a remarkable life of faith, priesthood, preaching, teaching, missionary discipleship and evangelization that eventually touched millions of people around the world.”
A person must be proclaimed “blessed” by the Church before a parish can be named after him or her, Tylka explained to EWTN News’ Mark Irons on Saturday outside of St. Mary’s Church. Tylka said he signed the decree to name the parish after Sheen on Friday morning, less than 24 hours after Sheen’s beatification.
“It’s great,” Tylka said when asked by Irons what he thought about having the parish named after Sheen. “This is where he was baptized, this parish church — which will still be St. Mary’s Church, but it is St. Mary’s Church of Blessed Fulton Sheen Parish — to know that connection, that we’re continuing on that faith that God has given to us that he witnessed so well, just immense pride and certainly for the folks here … to be able to know that theirs is the first parish to ever honor the blessed.”
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Sheen, despite his humble origins in small-town Illinois, aspired to great things as an academic and as a communicator of the Catholic faith. On Thursday, before a crowd of more than 50,000 at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, the farm-boy-turned-mass-media star was declared “blessed” after the reading of a decree signed by Pope Leo XIV, a fellow Midwesterner.
Via his decree, Pope Leo announced Blessed Sheen’s feast day will be on Dec. 9, the anniversary of his death. His feast day is expected to be on the calendar of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Sheen was born in Illinois in 1895 and ordained a priest of the Diocese of Peoria in 1919. He later became an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of New York and then bishop of Rochester, New York.
His international fame was largely due to his ability to use the new forms of media of his time to proclaim the Catholic faith.
Through his television program “Life Is Worth Living,” broadcast during the 1950s, Sheen brought reflections on faith, morality, and the meaning of life into millions of homes, becoming one of the most recognizable Catholic figures on American television.
Mark Irons and Jonah McKeown contributed to this report.
This story was updated at 4:02 p.m. ET on Sept. 26, 2026, with the statement from the Diocese of Peoria/Bishop Tylka and comments to Mark Irons.
From foster care to Lourdes: Young convert leaves job to see pope, embrace monastic life
LOURDES, France — The exceptional fervor that marked the pope’s visit to Paris — the first stage of his Sept. 25–28 apostolic journey to France — should show no sign of waning in Lourdes, where tens of thousands of faithful are expected to gather around the famous grotto of Massabielle when Leo XIV comes to pray there on the evening of Sept. 26, ahead of an outdoor Mass on the sanctuary’s meadow and the traditional torchlight procession the following day.
Among them will be a 27-year-old woman who will attend alongside a group of Cistercian nuns, hoping the visit will confirm the call to contemplative life she has felt since returning to the faith during the COVID-19 crisis.
It is no coincidence that Yohanna, a sign-language interpreter for deaf people, has chosen Lourdes to mark this new beginning after years of volunteering with people with disabilities. It is a few dozen miles from here, at the Abbey of Sainte-Marie de Boulaur, one of the strongholds of monastic renewal in France, that her vocation took shape. And it is to join this community as an aspirant that she quit her job in Paris, just in time not to miss the Holy Father’s visit.
Her story reflects a broader generational movement in France, where adult baptisms reached a new record this year, driven largely by young adults.
‘I wanted to give God everything’
But Yohanna’s story is a singular testament to divine grace. Placed in foster care at the age of 4, she grew up far from any religious practice in a life marked early on by bereavement and solitude.
Like so many of her generation, she first went looking for answers in the spiritual movements close to the New Age that flourish among young French people — an exploration that left its mark, literally, in the tattoos she still carries. She evokes these wanderings today with a smile rather than regret, for it was through them, she believes, that she eventually found her way back to God.
That way opened in the spring of 2020, in a university residence emptied by the first COVID-19 lockdown.
“All the students had left, and it felt a bit like the end of the world,” she recalled. “I had nothing; I had no one. And suddenly there was this thought of God that took hold of me. I became really eager to know more about him.”
She began learning how to pray through online resources and quickly made prayer part of her daily life. Once the lockdown was lifted, she developed a taste for stepping into every church she encountered to pray alone, while avoiding Masses, since she didn’t know any of the customs. The turning point came in 2023, when she moved to Paris and walked into a church on a weekday, just as a Mass was beginning.
“I didn’t even know there was a consecration, although it is the heart of the Catholic Mass. But I spent that whole celebration crying at the back of the church,” she remembered. “And at the end I said to the Lord: OK, I’ve understood. Now I want to give you everything, really everything, my whole life. Do what you want with me. And from that moment on, everything changed.”
After settling in a parish in Paris’s 10th arrondissement, she undertook a period of catechetical formation and received the sacrament of confirmation.
During the National Pilgrimage each August, she serves as an interpreter for deaf-blind pilgrims — an experience that transformed her understanding of the sanctuary. “The real miracle of Lourdes,” she said, “is perhaps simply that we all end up together.”
Her conversion was followed by the call to consecrated life almost immediately, but she was determined not to rush her decision, having been warned that new converts “might be very enthusiastic and immediately think of consecrated life, only to give it up quickly.”
An unexpected call
Guided by her parish priest and the vocations service of the Archdiocese of Paris, she began discerning with apostolic sisters, cloistered life being the last thing on her mind. “Given my personal background, I had enormous clichés about monastic life,” she said. “I imagined all sorts of old-fashioned things.”
It was in the middle of a difficult university year, at the end of December 2024, that she first went to the Cistercian abbey of Boulaur, simply because she “had always heard that monasteries were a good place to rest and get some air.” She has returned every holiday since. When the sisters offered her a stay inside the enclosure, she accepted with the thought that it would only confirm her prejudices.
“I thought that going inside the cloister for the first time would help me understand that this was not my path at all, and that would settle it,” she said. “But when I experienced the cloister for the first time, it was incredible. I felt completely in my place.”
“The Lord knows us better than we know ourselves,” she continued. “Sometimes he leads us to things that at first seem absurd, and afterward you realize that it fits perfectly.”
At the 2025 Jubilee of Youth in Rome, she encountered the universal Church for the first time among thousands of young people “so different from each other, and all there for the Lord.” That experience now shapes her expectations for Leo’s visit to a France witnessing record numbers of adult baptisms.
Reflecting on the pope’s forthcoming visit to Lourdes, which Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes has described as that of “a simple pilgrim,” she said: “Pope Leo knows what is happening in our country, and I’m sure his words will help us on our way.” The official program already includes a special prayer for France, asking the Virgin Mary for the renewal of Christian families and the flourishing of vocations, “especially priestly and religious.”
Yohanna’s own vocation initially alarmed her foster parents. But faced with her perseverance and joy, they agreed to drive her to Boulaur themselves, giving them an opportunity to meet the sisters and discover the life she is preparing to embrace. From there, they will travel together to Lourdes for the pope’s visit.
“It will be a chance for them to meet the sisters and to see what a monastery really is, not just what people imagine,” she said. “That’s already a big step.”
Her aspirancy, the first step on the long road to the novitiate, is to last until June. She said her heart is “completely open” to what it will reveal. “If God calls me there, I’ll be so happy that I’ll offer him a big yes, with all my heart.”
Pope Leo XIV in Paris: No one ‘is merely a number’
PARIS — Pope Leo XIV told his congregation at an open-air Mass in Paris on Saturday that “none of us is merely a number or an entry in a register but a unique and irreplaceable person” in the eyes of God.
Local authorities estimated the size of the crowd at 800,000, the Vatican said.
Six young men with Down syndrome were among the many altar servers assisting Leo during the celebration Sept. 26.
Numerous families with children sprawled on picnic blankets, babies slept in strollers, and gray-haired women sat in camp chairs as they waited for Mass to start.
Some Catholics described waiting four to five hours to try to catch a glimpse of Leo as he drove nearly two miles down the Avenue of Champs-Élysées in the popemobile on his way from the Arche de Triomphe to the altar at the Place de la Concorde. Priests heard confessions on the sidewalk along the famous avenue.
Once the site of one of the guillotines that decapitated more than 1,000 people during the French Revolution, including King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette, the square was bathed in sunlight, the thick clouds of the morning having parted only 10 minutes before the start of Mass.
Jean Noizet, his parents, and five siblings ages 9 to 22 were among those who waited hours along the route for the papal Mass, traveling in from a Paris suburb.
The 15-year-old said his family wanted to show their unity with “all the Catholic Church.”
“From this beautiful city of Paris, I pray fervently that the living water of the Holy Spirit may flow throughout France,” Leo said in his homily.
“Seeing you gathered here … heirs to France’s long and beautiful history of faith, I say to you: Drink from the source that is the pierced heart of Jesus,” he said.
“Yes, you thirst for God, for life, for truth, for unity, for peace, for communion, and for happiness. You long to rediscover a horizon filled with light and to build a renewed nation upon roots nourished by faith.”
Thibault Lecauchois left home at 9 a.m. to travel two hours into the city for the Mass. He and his wife brought their 3-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son to see Pope Leo.
He told EWTN News the once-in-a-lifetime chance to see the pope in Paris was worth the challenges of the journey and waiting hours with two young children.
“We wanted the kids to have the blessing of the pope, and we wanted to share the moment with the rest of the community of Catholics,” he said, noting that his daughter was delighted and shouted “Pape Leon” when she saw him.
With tired kids, he was unsure they would be able to stay for the entire Mass, which started at 3 p.m. local time.
“I think he’s a pope of hope. I think a message of peace is very important nowadays, and Iʼm eager for him to show it to the rest of the world. And I think Paris is a very good place to do so.”
Lourdes
Following the Mass, Pope Leo embarked on the second leg of his trip, flying to Lourdes, at the foot of the Pyrénées in southwest France, where he will spend a day and half in prayer at the shrine where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette.
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes, one of the most visited Catholic shrines in the world, draws more than 3 million people every year — many in search of miraculous physical healing.
The 136-acre property includes the Grotto of Massabielle, where a young St. Bernadette Soubirous saw 18 apparitions of the Virgin Mary starting on Feb. 11, 1858. Today, pilgrims to the sanctuary drink and bathe in the healing water Mary revealed to Bernadette.
Pope Leo XIV arrived Saturday evening at the Lourdes shrine, which was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with cheering pilgrims from France and around the world.
His first stop was to the grotto of the apparitions for a brief prayer service, which began with a moment of private prayer. The loud and excited crowds fell completely silent as Leo knelt in prayer for nearly four minutes.
Leo touched the rock of the grotto and drank a glass of the shrine’s spring water. He placed a lit candle before the statue of the Virgin Mary.
“We pray to you, our Mother, for France, for you are her patroness and have protected her for so many centuries,” the pontiff prayed aloud.
“May the most disadvantaged and the poorest always be supported,” he said. “Obtain for France wise and generous leaders, ready to make sacrifices, capable of responding to challenges, and eager to serve the common good. May they keep France at peace within the family of nations, and may they make her voice heard in promoting the defense of fundamental human rights and peace in the world, rejecting the mentality of war once and for all.”
“Mother full of love, we entrust to you our most urgent personal intentions, especially those of the sick and suffering, as well as all those who accompany them, who have come together to find strength and healing at the spring of Massabielle,” Leo said.
He then honored the statue of the Immaculate Conception with a Golden Rose — one of the highest distinctions a pope can bestow upon a Marian image or shrine.
Knights of Columbus pitch their role at Symposium on Young American Men
A senior adviser to the Knights of Columbus discussed the need for men to have fraternal community at the Second Symposium on Young American Men held in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 25.
“We’re social beings, so we want to join communities … where we can be our authentic selves,” said Joseph McInerney, the Knights’ chief strategy adviser and senior vice president for leader development.
The symposium, sponsored in part by the Knights, was focused on problems faced by young American men in 2026. The symposium focused primarily on public policy solutions advanced by both Republicans and Democrats but also included talks unrelated to government, such as McInerney’s, which was about the role of fraternal community in helping strengthen men.
Other conference sponsors included the Institute for Family Studies, the National Parents Organization, and the Men’s Health Network.
Although the Knights are known for being popular with older, retired men, McInerney noted significant growth in recent years with young men on college campuses and those who recently entered the workforce. He pointed out that men who are under 35 are the organization’s fastest-growing membership segment, and there are now more than 300 active college Knights councils, with nearly half of those in the United States.
“The lifeblood of the Knights is young men,” McInerney said, adding that “it’s a place where they can … spend time with other men — their peers — and that, frankly, is very powerful.”
McInerney pitched fraternal communities as a means to combat male loneliness and isolation but also to build up men into leaders and “better themselves so they can be better husbands, fathers, … and members of their community.”
Warning against isolation, which McInerney said is amplified through the internet and media, he said: “We’re not made for that.” Rather, “we’re made for rich and beautiful relationships with the people that we love.”
Although the broader symposium was not primarily focused on matters of faith, McInerney said a major attraction of the Knights for young men is faith formation. He referenced in particular the Knights’ Cor program, which develops small groups for men focused on prayer, formation, and fraternity. The Knights also run the McGivney Fellowship, which is a two-year leadership formation program.
“They become good people,” McInerney said of the goals of the Knights’ programs. “They become people who are worthy of trust, and those are the type of people we want to lead us.”
Speaking to EWTN News after his talk, McInerney noted that the uniqueness of the Knights of Columbus is that it is a Catholic fraternal organization that is also focused on serving others through charity, which he sees as another attraction for young men.
“We want to help people spiritually, but we also have this mandate to serve,” he said. “Thatʼs why we exist, [it] is to help other people. And so, when you join the group, thatʼs kind of part of the package deal that we offer.”
“Itʼs natural if youʼre working on your spiritual life, you want to share the grace that youʼre receiving in your relationship with God,” McInerney said.
McInerney said Catholic men who wish to join can visit their website and get connected to a local council.
“Whatever councilʼs closest to you, weʼll get that person in contact,” he said. “And then whatʼs most important. … Entry might be online there, but whatʼs most important is then getting that man in touch with a man face-to-face.”