San Francisco Frontiers - Pope celebrates giant Paris mass in landmark visit

The leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics is on a four-day trip to France, a secular country with deep Catholic roots, with his trip stirring enthusiasm and spiritual fervour among the faithful.

In the highlight of the visit's second day, the 71-year-old pope led believers in a mass at Place de la Concorde, where a giant white canopy had been erected to serve as a makeshift altar. Dozens of screens have been installed to allow worshippers to follow the service.

Some 700,000 people were in attendance, the Vatican said. The city centre was sealed off for the service, with helicopters circling overhead and snipers positioned on rooftops.

Parents arrived with pushchairs and children perched on their shoulders as crowds hoped to catch a glimpse of the pontiff on the first official papal visit to France in nearly two decades.

"We're incredibly lucky," Suzanne Grange, 62, said ahead of the mass.

"We were already lucky enough to see Pope John Paul II in Paris back in 1980," her husband Pascal, 65, added.

The first US pontiff was visiting France seven months before voters choose a successor to centrist President Emmanuel Macron, with the anti-immigration far right eyeing its best opportunity yet to capture the presidency.

A number of politicians were present, including far-right leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella and former president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Macron was not expected to attend the mass and was represented by his wife Brigitte.

- 'Civilisation of love' -

Fifteen-year-old Alix said ahead of the service that seeing the pope would be "really something."

"After all, he's God's representative on Earth," said the teenager who wore electric blue mascara and glittery cross-shaped earrings.

Earlier in the day, the pope met migrants as he visited Maison Bakhita, an association supporting refugees.

He said it was "possible to encounter one another and to live together in dignity and peace."

Leo also stressed the "fundamental role of women in building a civilisation of love."

The association said the pope's visit sent a "message" ahead of the April-May election.

- 'Saints of France' -

On Friday, an estimated 300,000 people turned out to see the pontiff as he waved from his popemobile on the way to the Notre Dame Cathedral.

"There is a sense of fervour reminiscent of that experienced over 40 years ago with John Paul II," Francois Mabille, director of the Geopolitical Observatory on Religion, told broadcaster RMC.

On Friday, Pope Leo stressed the need for ethics to avoid an AI-driven "paradise of machines" and, as war rages in Ukraine for a fifth year, urged France to remain a "tireless champion of peace".

He also told young adults at a stadium outside the French capital on Friday night that they were the "saints of France."

In a deeply secular country, only around five percent of France's 69 million residents go to Catholic church services regularly, a survey found last year.

But while infant baptisms have declined in recent years, increasing numbers of teenagers and adults are being baptised.

After the mass in Paris, Pope Leo will head to Lourdes, a town in southwestern France where, according to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared in a grotto in 1858 to a peasant girl.

In Lourdes on Sunday, he will speak with seven victims of clerical sex abuse.

A 2021 inquiry found that clergy or lay members of the Church had abused about 330,000 people as minors in France, over seven decades.

In recent years, further accusations have emerged against charity icon Abbe Pierre and workers at a Catholic boarding school near Lourdes.

For the last leg of his trip, in Metz on Monday, Leo is expected to deliver a speech about peace in Europe.

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Z.Phillips--SFF