Pope Leo XIV in one of the most photogenic places in Catholic Europe

On the evening of 26 September Pope Leo XIV flew by helicopter to Lourdes as part of his apostolic visit to France. At the Massabielle Grotto the Pope led a prayer service attended by numerous pilgrims. Before the statue of the Mother of God, Leo XIV touched the rock of the grotto, drank water from the spring and lit a candle.

Lourdes lies at the foot of the Pyrenees in south-west France. In 1858 Bernadette Soubirous, the fourteen-year-old daughter of a miller, reported that the Virgin Mary had appeared to her many times in the Massabielle Grotto. During one of the apparitions the Mother of God called herself the Immaculate Conception. Four years earlier the Catholic Church had proclaimed the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, according to which the Virgin Mary was free from original sin from the moment of her conception. The Church recognised the Lourdes apparitions as authentic, canonised Bernadette, and Lourdes became one of the largest centres of Catholic pilgrimage, to which the sick in particular travel in hope of healing.

At the beginning of the prayer the Pope addressed the Mother of God and recalled that it was in this very place that she had spoken with Saint Bernadette and had given the world her message of prayer, repentance and hope. Leo XIV asked for France fraternal concord and a society free from violence and hatred, in which everyone could work, raise a family and live in peace, and in which the poorest would always find support. He prayed for wise and generous leaders who would defend fundamental human rights and peace throughout the world and would reject for ever the logic of war.

The Pope entrusted Christian families to the Mother of God and prayed that families might be open to the birth of children, and that the Lord might awaken in them vocations to the priesthood and the monastic life. A special place in the prayer was given to the sick pilgrims who had come to Lourdes in search of strength and healing, as well as to their relatives and loved ones, including those who have died. After the "Our Father" and the apostolic blessing, Leo XIV laid a golden rose at the foot of the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. The Golden Rose is a special token of papal favour, which popes bless and present to distinguished churches and shrines, and which in the past was also presented to Catholic monarchs.