In France, Pope Denounces Abortion, Euthanasia and Confronts Abuse Crisis
In Lourdes, Leo XIV called the legalization of assisted dying false compassion, while meeting survivors of clergy abuse, in a secular country where these positions remain deeply contested.
Pope Leo XIV continued his visit to France on Sunday with a trip to Lourdes, the Catholic shrine associated with miraculous cures, where he sharpened his message against euthanasia and abortion, in a country whose officially secular positions on these issues diverge sharply from Church teaching.
Speaking before the sick and disabled gathered in Lourdes, the pope said 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. He also warned that what is legal is not necessarily moral, a line aimed directly at the French law that took effect in July, making the country the fifth in the world, after the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Canada, to legalize assisted suicide for people with incurable and painful conditions.
The pontiff's visit comes as France has recently enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution, further widening the gap between the secular state's positions and Catholic teaching on questions of life and death. That tension has run through the whole of Leo XIV's trip, which has drawn enormous crowds, including an estimated 800,000 faithful at his Mass on Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Lourdes has also become, in recent years, a place of healing for survivors of clergy sexual abuse. The pope was due to meet seven survivors there, including one who was abused as an adult, an explicit acknowledgment of what the Catholic Church now calls a new frontier in the abuse crisis. The shrine is also linked to a particularly sensitive case, that of Marko Rupnik, one of the Church's most famous mosaic artists, whose work adorns one of Lourdes's basilicas, and who is currently on trial before a Vatican court, accused by more than two dozen women of psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse dating back to the 1990s.
The pope met with French bishops before celebrating Mass before an estimated 150,000 people in Lourdes, closing out a symbolic day that combined a spiritual message on protecting life with a direct acknowledgment of the wounds inflicted by the institution he leads.
