On the first day, Leo XIV will speak at UNESCO — the UN agency for education, science and culture — and intends to talk about artificial intelligence, education, and art. In the encyclical “Magnificent Humanity”, he called for strict regulation of AI and for slowing its development, which differs from the course of Donald Trump’s administration, which encourages AI innovation.
The pope will then travel to Lourdes, one of the most visited Christian pilgrimage centers, especially popular among the sick because of its reputation for miraculous healings. There, he is expected to once again call for the protection of life, as John Paul II did in 2004 on his last foreign trip to Lourdes, when he sharply condemned abortion and euthanasia during Mass.
With Leo XIV’s blessing, French bishops chose the official motto of the trip, “So that the world may have life”. France is a secular state, where public life is governed by the 1905 law on the separation of church and state, and in 2024 the National Assembly enshrined abortion as a constitutional right and recently finally approved a bill allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive a lethal drug.
The bishops expect about 1 million people to see the pope. Due to a larger-than-expected turnout, organizers extended the perimeter of the main Mass at Place de la Concorde, going beyond the 1.9-kilometer stretch of the Champs-Élysées, along which Leo XIV will travel in the popemobile.
His visit to Metz in northeastern France, the birthplace of Robert Schuman, one of the founders of European integration, is scheduled for September 28. There he will meet with other religious leaders and speak at a European conference on peace amid the war in Ukraine and other conflicts.
The Vatican announced in advance that the pope will meet with seven victims of sexual abuse by clergy, including one person who was already an adult at the time of the abuse. In addition, Leo XIV will meet with newly converted adults: at Easter this year, more than 13,000 adults were baptized in France, and the number of such baptisms has more than tripled since 2016, although in 1980 there were 513,000 baptisms in France, and in 2024 — 186,000.
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