Pope Leo XIV used a Mass before 150,000 people at Lourdes to reaffirm Catholic teaching on protecting human life as France implements a new assisted-dying law, while his pilgrimage also confronted the country’s clergy sexual abuse crisis.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom.
LOURDES, France — Pope Leo XIV brought his call for protecting human life to one of Catholicism’s best-known shrines Sunday, using his pilgrimage to Lourdes to emphasize the dignity of the sick and vulnerable as France moves forward with a newly enacted law permitting medically assisted dying.
About 150,000 people gathered on the prairie outside the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes for the Sept. 27 Mass, including many pilgrims who were sick or disabled. Vatican News reported that the congregation also included approximately 1,000 priests, 150 bishops, about 100 deacons and 1,500 volunteers.
Leo criticized what he called “current trends that seek to redefine the value of human life in illness, suffering and old age” and emphasized that physical weakness does not diminish a person’s dignity.
“Here, no one is turned away due to their frailty,” Leo said during his homily.
The message continued a central theme of Leo’s four-day visit to France: the Catholic teaching that human life should be protected from conception through natural death. That position places the church in opposition to abortion, euthanasia and medically assisted dying.
France has recently moved in the opposite direction on both abortion and end-of-life law. Abortion protections were added to the French Constitution in 2024, while a separate measure establishing a legal right to assisted dying completed its legislative process this summer.
The National Assembly gave final approval to the assisted-dying legislation July 15 by a vote of 291-241, with 29 abstentions. France’s Constitutional Council upheld the measure Aug. 14, and it was promulgated as law Aug. 18. The law permits qualifying adults suffering from a serious and incurable condition that threatens their life to request a lethal substance that they may administer themselves or, when physically unable to do so, have administered by a doctor or nurse.
Leo’s appearance at Lourdes gave his message additional significance because the sanctuary has long been associated with illness, disability and healing.
Lourdes became an international pilgrimage destination following events in 1858, when 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous reported a series of apparitions of the Virgin Mary at a grotto near the town. The Catholic Church later recognized the apparitions, and millions of pilgrims now travel to the site each year.
Many visitors come seeking physical or spiritual healing and drink or bathe in water from the spring at the Grotto of Massabielle. The Catholic Church has formally recognized 72 cures connected with Lourdes as medically unexplained and miraculous.
Leo arrived at Lourdes from Paris on Saturday evening. Soon after arriving, he went directly to the Grotto of the Apparitions, knelt in prayer, touched its stone wall and drank water from the spring. He also presented a golden rose, a traditional papal devotional gift, and prayed for France, the sick, people experiencing poverty and those affected by war.
The response to Leo’s visit has included crowds far exceeding initial expectations. Approximately 800,000 people attended his open-air Mass at the Place de la Concorde in Paris earlier in the trip, according to reporting from the Associated Press.
“He has given a message of hope for France, a message of hope and greatness for France, and renewal for France,” Paris pilgrim Pierre Caziljc said.
Sunday morning, Leo met with French bishops before traveling to the Lourdes prairie for Mass. He urged church leaders to continue confronting the consequences of clergy abuse and acknowledged the effect the scandal has had on trust in the priesthood.
Lourdes has increasingly become associated not only with people seeking healing from illness but also with survivors of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
Leo was scheduled to meet privately Sunday with seven survivors of abuse committed by priests or other Catholic personnel. The group included people abused as children and at least one survivor abused as an adult, according to the French Bishops’ Conference.
The meeting comes as the French church continues dealing with the findings of a sweeping 2021 independent investigation into sexual abuse.
That commission estimated that approximately 330,000 children in France had suffered sexual abuse over seven decades involving priests, other clergy, church employees or volunteers. About 3,000 priests and church workers were implicated in the estimate cited in reporting on the investigation. The methodology and some of the report’s conclusions have been challenged, but the findings prompted major institutional changes within the French Catholic Church.
French bishops subsequently established an independent system intended to provide recognition and compensation to survivors.
Nearly 2,000 people had approached the Independent National Authority for Recognition and Reparation for assistance over its first five years. More than 1,100 reparations decisions had been completed, with financial compensation averaging nearly 37,000 euros for recipients, according to figures released ahead of Leo’s trip.
The compensation recommended through the church’s system has exceeded 20 million euros, approximately $22.7 million.
Some survivors and advocacy groups remain critical of how the church has handled the crisis and of the structure of Leo’s meeting at Lourdes.
On the day the pope arrived in Paris, a group of survivors published an open letter calling on him to acknowledge institutional responsibility and objecting that the people chosen to meet with him had been selected by church officials rather than directly by survivor organizations.
“The Church must relinquish its position as both judge and party to the proceedings,” the group wrote in the letter published by the French newspaper Liberation.
Monsignor Pierre-Antoine Bozo, spokesperson for the French Bishops’ Conference, said two members of the seven-person group had, in fact, been proposed by survivor organizations. He said the limited size of the meeting was intended to allow Leo to listen closely to each participant.
“When it comes to listening to them, you can’t have 50 people in front of you,” Bozo said. “So I think that’s really what the pope chose: to listen so that we can act and respond more effectively.”
The seven participants themselves said before the meeting that they did not claim to speak for every survivor and intended to present their individual experiences and concerns to the pope.
The abuse crisis is also physically visible at Lourdes because of artwork adorning the sanctuary.
Large mosaics at the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary were created by the Rev. Marko Rupnik, a Slovenian priest and internationally known mosaic artist who has been accused by more than two dozen women of psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse dating to the 1990s.
The allegations include claims that some misconduct occurred during the creation of his artwork.
Rupnik’s case was mishandled for years within church institutions, and critics also questioned whether Pope Francis had intervened on behalf of his fellow Jesuit. The Vatican has not established that Francis improperly protected Rupnik. Francis ultimately waived the statute of limitations and authorized a canonical criminal proceeding, allowing the allegations to be formally examined.
That process remains underway. The Vatican said in July that reports claiming judges had already reached a decision were “entirely unfounded” and that the judicial panel was continuing to examine material from dioceses, Jesuit authorities, the people involved and other sources.
Rupnik’s artwork has forced Catholic institutions around the world to decide whether displaying the mosaics is compatible with efforts to support abuse survivors.
Lourdes Bishop Jean-Marc Micas began addressing the issue in 2024 by ending nighttime illumination of Rupnik’s mosaics on the façade of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary.
The sanctuary subsequently covered mosaics on entrance doors, and the bishop later decided that the façade mosaics should also be concealed. Vatican News reported this week that Rupnik’s mosaics at Lourdes had been covered with fabric during Leo’s visit.
Micas has said survivors seeking healing at Lourdes should not be forced to encounter works created by a man they associate with alleged abuse.
Five women who say Rupnik abused them wrote to Leo before his visit, praising Micas for covering the mosaics while criticizing what they described as the Vatican’s lengthy failure to address their accusations.
“This prolonged and loud silence has been experienced by us, the victims, as a further, continuous violence,” they wrote.
The dispute has unfolded alongside efforts at Lourdes to create art centered on survivors themselves. A new 50-square-meter mosaic titled “Renaître,” or “Reborn,” was developed by Sister Samuelle, who has said she was abused by Rupnik, with participation from other survivors and their relatives. Vatican News reported that fragments of the work are being placed at symbolic locations, including Lourdes.
Bozo supported Micas’ decision concerning the Rupnik works while emphasizing that the decision belonged to the local bishop rather than the French Bishops’ Conference as a whole.
“It creates such a heavy symbolic burden for the victims,” Bozo said. “For them, I think this had to be done.”
Original article
Comments