Pope Leo XIV closed out his four-day visit to France by urging Europe to remember and reclaim its Christian heritage, telling an audience in the northeastern city of Metz that the faith is inseparable from the continent’s identity.
“One cannot speak of Europe without mentioning Christianity,” the pontiff said Monday, according to France24, nodding to historians who trace the faith’s presence in Europe back nearly 2,000 years to the 1st century AD.
The speech, delivered before Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox leaders, marked the fourth and final day of a trip that the Associated Press described as defined by Leo’s repeated appeals for Europe to draw on its Christian roots when confronting today’s ethical and geopolitical challenges.
Praise for European integration — with a caveat
The U.S.-born pope struck a broadly favorable tone toward European integration, calling cooperation with others a “social and political necessity.” But he pressed the continent’s leaders to give “real substance” to words such as freedom, democracy and unity — a line that carried an implicit critique of rhetoric he suggested had grown hollow.
“Europe has flourished and progressed when it has been able to draw on the best aspects of its past and reinvent them in new and creative ways through encounters with others,” Leo said, per France24.
The pope’s framing of the continent’s Christian background as a unifying thread comes as mass illegal migration across European borders continues to trouble governments across the bloc — a context referenced in Breitbart News’ coverage of the address.
The message dovetailed with remarks made earlier this year by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told attendees at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that the “delusion” of globalism and decisions to allow mass migration into the West threaten the future of Europe and its peoples.
A message aimed at the young
Leo devoted a substantial portion of the Metz address to young people, urging them to take responsibility for promoting peace and warning against a mentality of violence and oppression.
“Have the courage to take up with responsibility the task of promoting peace — in your hearts, in your relationships, within your families, in schools and universities, in your cities and countries, and throughout all of Europe,” the pope said.
“Do not give in to the mentality of violence and oppression,” he continued. “Love life at every moment, and do not be afraid of the future!”
He then turned to family life directly, telling his audience: “Do not be afraid to start a family, to bring children into the world, to defend the dignity of every person, from the moment of conception to death.”
Pushback on assisted dying in Lourdes
The theme of human dignity from conception through natural death has been a throughline of the trip. A day earlier, at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes, Leo condemned legislation recently approved in France permitting medically assisted dying, calling it “false compassion.”
Speaking to a group of sick pilgrims, the pope said the ill are not a “burden” but rather the “beating heart of our humanity and a precious treasure for the Church.”
Big crowds, rising baptisms
The turnout for Leo’s visit has surprised even organizers. According to Breitbart News, roughly 800,000 people attended his Mass on Paris’ Place de la Concorde — a scale of gathering that few had anticipated.
That crowd size arrives alongside signs of institutional revival in a country long defined by official secularism. Adult and teenage baptisms in France hit record levels this year, up 20 percent over 2025, according to the report.
Leo’s final event of the trip was a Mass on Monday at the cathedral of St. Stephen in Metz, one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture. Its soaring vaults and stained-glass windows — some designed by the 20th century Jewish artist Marc Chagall — have earned the cathedral the nickname “Lanterne du Bon Dieu,” or “The Good Lord’s Lantern.”
The visit took place against the backdrop of a France that is officially secular yet historically steeped in Catholic tradition, a tension the pope addressed directly by asking the continent to hold both its secular present and its religious inheritance together rather than treating the latter as an artifact.
Whether that appeal translates into political effect remains to be seen. But the scale of the crowds, the record baptism figures and the pointed nature of Leo’s remarks on migration, family and end-of-life law suggest a pontiff willing to engage the continent’s most contested debates from its most visible pulpit.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/28/pope-leo-urges-europe-to-remember-and-embrace-its-christian-heritage/