For the World to Have Life
For the World to Have Life. The motto for the journey of Pope Leo XIV in France — a Church standing at the threshold
The pope in France. I’ll shape this as a contemplative journey rather than a report: beginning with the Pope’s presence, moving through France’s wounds and hopes, and ending with what the visit asks of the Church there. I’ll ground the piece in KTO’s coverage and official sources so the spiritual reading rests on solid facts
There are papal journeys that are remembered for crowds, speeches and photographs. And there are journeys that, if we allow them, become something else: a visitation.
Pope Leo XIV arrived in France this morning, 25 September, beginning four days that will carry him from Paris and Saint-Denis to Lourdes and finally Metz. The motto chosen for the journey is strikingly simple: “Pour que le monde ait la vie” — “That the world may have life.” KTO, in preparing for these days, has asked a question beneath all the practical ones: after experiencing secularisation so profoundly, is something awakening in the Church in France? And what missionary meaning might these four days have? KTO TV
Perhaps that is the question with which we should accompany the Pope.
Not: How many people will come?
Not even: Will this visit be a success?
But:
Where is life stirring?
And perhaps, even more searchingly:
Where has the Church in France still to allow God to bring her back to life?
A cathedral rebuilt — and a Church still being rebuilt
There is something almost providential about Léon XIV coming to Paris now.
Notre-Dame stands again.
Its stones have been cleaned. Its vaults repaired. Its altar has again become a place of worship. What fire seemed to have taken away has, through years of patient labour, been restored.
In his first address in France today, the Pope himself returned to this image. He presented the restoration of Notre-Dame not merely as a technical achievement but as a sign that what appears lost can be born anew through shared effort and hope. vaticannews.va
Later today he will enter that cathedral to celebrate Vespers with bishops, priests, deacons, seminarians and consecrated men and women. Vaticaanse Pers
And there is a question hidden inside that encounter.
Can what happened to the cathedral happen to the Church?
France knows what it is to watch religious structures empty. It knows the exhaustion of fewer priests, weakened institutions and communities uncertain about their future. It also carries the grave wounds left by sexual abuse within the Church. Vatican News notes that French pastors are receiving this visit amid precisely those difficulties, even while unexpected signs of missionary vitality are appearing. vaticannews.va
So perhaps Notre-Dame should not become an occasion for Catholic nostalgia.
It could become an examination of conscience.
A building can be restored beautifully while the heart remains untouched.
The deeper restoration has to happen elsewhere.
In trust.
In holiness.
In truthfulness.
In the willingness to begin again.
And suddenly, people are knocking at the door
This is where the story becomes more mysterious.
At the very moment when many assumed that Christianity in France would simply continue fading, young adults have begun appearing at the doors of churches asking for Baptism. Bishops preparing for the papal visit have repeatedly spoken of a genuine spiritual thirst, and the growth of catechumens and neophytes has become one of the significant themes of the journey. vaticannews.va
It would be premature to call this a “revival” and move on.
Something more demanding may be happening.
People who have not inherited Christianity culturally are asking to choose Christ consciously.
And that changes the Church.
The young person asking for Baptism cannot be answered with: This is how we have always done things.
He asks:
Who is Jesus?
Why should I believe?
How do I pray?
How should I live?
Will you walk with me?
This may be one of the great graces hidden inside France’s secularisation. When faith ceases to be socially automatic, the Gospel has to be proposed again as Gospel.
Not as decoration.
Not as identity.
Not as memory.
As encounter.
KTO’s coverage captures this beautifully: Léon XIV is not simply coming to address an established Catholic structure. In Paris he is to meet an ecclesial assembly particularly concerned with catechumens and neophytes; he will pray with young people at the Stade de France; and he will encounter a Church trying to understand how to accompany those who are arriving unexpectedly at its door. KTO TV
Perhaps these new Christians are not merely people whom the old Church must teach.
Perhaps God is using them to teach the old Church how to believe again.
Saint-Denis: do not be afraid of the young
Tonight the Pope goes to Saint-Denis.
A stadium will become, for a few hours, a place of prayer.
That juxtaposition matters.
Faith is leaving the protected spaces where we expect to find it and moving into a place associated with noise, sport, concerts and contemporary life. Thousands of young people will gather there not because Catholicism possesses France culturally, but because amid everything competing for their attention, some still hunger for God. KTO TV
The temptation for an older Church is always to look at young believers and immediately ask how to organise them.
How to classify them.
How to fit them into movements, structures and programmes.
But Archbishop Philippe Ballot of Metz, reflecting on the increase of catechumens, offered a more delicate insight: these young seekers need accompaniment, presence and relationship; they should not simply be made to fit pre-existing systems. vaticannews.va
That sounds almost Ignatian.
Before asking, What shall we make them into?
Ask: What is God already doing in them?
Listen first.
Discern.
Accompany.
Then help the flame grow without extinguishing it.
Perhaps this is part of the conversion being asked of the Church in France: from managing decline to recognising grace when it arrives in an unfamiliar form.
Then the journey moves away from the centre
There is another movement in the programme that speaks without needing much commentary.
From the Élysée, UNESCO and Notre-Dame, Léon XIV will go to a house that receives migrants, the Maison Bakhita. KTO TV
From the great symbols of France to people who possess very little.
That movement tells us something fundamental about the Church.
If renewed Christianity means only fuller churches, it is not yet renewal.
Life received from Christ moves outward.
Toward the stranger.
Toward the poor.
Toward the person whose name does not appear in the photograph.
In his address at the Élysée today, Léon XIV deliberately recalled the long French Catholic tradition of care for vulnerable people and described such service as a school of humanity. He also insisted that Christian participation in public life need not contradict a rightly understood laïcité; faith can contribute to the common good without seeking to impose itself. vaticannews.va
That may be particularly important for French Catholicism.
The way forward is neither retreat into a frightened enclave nor an attempt to recover vanished social power.
It is presence.
A Christian who knows whom he belongs to does not need to dominate the public square.
He can serve in it.
Lourdes: the Church must also kneel before her wounds
And then the Pope goes to Lourdes.
Here the rhythm changes.
Paris speaks.
Lourdes listens.
Paris debates culture, education, technology and society.
Lourdes leads us toward a grotto.
Toward Mary.
Toward illness.
Toward fragility.
Toward the place where human beings stop pretending that they can save themselves.
Léon XIV will pray at the Grotto, celebrate Mass and meet sick people and those who accompany them. KTO TV
But there is another encounter, deliberately private.
During the journey, the Pope is expected to meet people who have suffered sexual violence within the Church. French Church officials have stressed that the meeting is intended to be genuinely interpersonal and prepared in consultation with survivors themselves. KTO TV
That cannot simply be another item on a papal itinerary.
Spiritually, it belongs at the heart of the journey.
Because an authentic renewal of the Church in France cannot mean rushing past the wounded in order to celebrate the new catechumens.
There can be no resurrection that refuses to look at the wounds.
The risen Christ did not erase His wounds.
He showed them.
Perhaps Lourdes therefore asks the Church in France for something very difficult: to hope without forgetting; to rebuild without concealing; to evangelise while continuing to repent.
That is a more credible Church
Not a Church claiming to be without wounds.
A Church in which wounds are no longer hidden from the light.
Metz: remember what reconciliation can do
Finally comes Metz.
Not Rome.
Not another great Catholic centre.
A borderland.
A place marked by wars, annexations and the long, painful history between France and Germany; today, that same region can be read as a sign that former enemies need not remain enemies forever. The Pope’s final day will include an interreligious encounter and a reflection on Europe’s roots, peace and unity. KTO TV
And perhaps that is where the journey opens outward.
The Church in France is not being renewed merely for herself.
The Pope said this morning before the country’s authorities that peace is not simply an equilibrium of competing forces; it has to be constructed through dialogue and justice. He called France to continue serving peace and multilateral cooperation. vaticannews.va
For the Church, however, there is an even deeper vocation beneath diplomacy:
to demonstrate that reconciliation is possible because grace is possible.
A border can become a bridge.
A cathedral can rise after fire.
A wounded Church can learn truthfulness.
A secularised generation can begin asking about Baptism.
A stranger can become a brother
An enemy need not remain an enemy.
A tomb need not have the last word.
Perhaps this is what the visit means
Maybe Léon XIV has not come to France primarily to tell French Catholics that everything is going well.
Nor has he come to preside over the funeral of a dying Christianity.
The journey can be read in another way.
He is walking through the places where death and life meet.
A cathedral that burned and was rebuilt.
A Church diminished, yet receiving unexpected catechumens.
Young people growing up amid profound secularisation, yet gathering to pray.
Migrants looking for a home.
Victims asking that their suffering finally be heard.
The sick at Lourdes.
A frontier once soaked in European conflict that now speaks of reconciliation.
And through all of it runs one sentence:
For the world to have life.
Perhaps the most important question for the Church in France, when Léon XIV finally returns to Rome on Monday, will therefore not be:
What did the Pope say to us?
It may be:
Where did he point to life — and are we willing to go there?
Because a papal visit lasts four days.
Conversion takes considerably longer.
And perhaps the grace of these days will only begin when the crowds have disappeared, Notre-Dame is quiet again, the candles at Lourdes have burned low, and ordinary Christians return to their parishes and ask, very simply:
