Bierre is editor of the French monthly, Nouvelle Solidarité.

Oct. 1—Pope Leo XIV’s four-day trip to France is already turning the country upside down. Despite its well-known secularism, France has never abandoned its claim to being “the eldest daughter of the church,” based on the conversion of Clovis to Christianity in AD 496. In his first visit to France in 1980, Pope John Paul II had therefore asked the essential question: “France, eldest daughter of the Church and educator of peoples, are you loyal to the promises of your baptism?”

Received by President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace on September 25, the Pope then paid a long visit to UNESCO. He later visited, in his popemobile, an area of Paris where an estimated 300,000 Catholics had come for the occasion. After a Vespers mass at Notre-Dame, he concluded his first day with a meeting with 80,000 youth at the Stadium of France in the evening! Unable to find meaningful words in its vocabulary, leading daily Le Monde, surprised, reported that the youth gave him a reception comparable to those reserved for famous rock stars. Then, on the evening of Sept. 26, 800,000 people participated in the Pope’s outdoor mass at the Paris Place de la Concorde!