LOURDES, France (AP) — Pope Leo XIV slammed the legalization of medical assistance in dying, calling it immoral “false compassion,” as he doubled down on Catholic teaching on life during a visit Sunday to Lourdesthe French Catholic shrine associated with miraculous healings of the sick.
On his third day in France, Leo once again immersed himself in the end-of-life debate that has erupted in countries around the world. It rocked French politics for years before recently leading to legislation allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive deadly drugs.
Léon’s visit to the once staunchly Catholic and officially secular France was marked by huge crowds – 800,000 people at Léon’s mass at Paris’ iconic Place de la Concorde – and by his messages against abortion and medically assisted dying.
On Sunday, the American pope celebrated mass in front of some 150,000 people, many in wheelchairs, in the meadow next to the main basilica of Lourdes. He then visited a care center for the sick located within the sanctuary grounds. He sought to encourage especially those living in “terrible pain” to recognize that they possess an inherent dignity that no law or algorithm can “take away.”
“On the contrary, 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 declared. “What is legal is not necessarily moral,” Leo said to applause from the crowd.
Lourdes became a major pilgrimage destination after the Catholic Church officially recognized visions of the Virgin Mary reported here by a young girl in 1858. The site near the Spanish border attracts millions of pilgrims each year, especially sick and disabled believers hoping for healing from the famous spring water of the Lourdes Grotto where the visions are said to have taken place.
Léon arrived in Lourdes from Paris on Saturday evening and immediately prayed inside the Grotto of the Apparitions and drank from the spring.
“He gave a message of hope for France, a message of hope and greatness for France, and of renewal for France,” said Parisian pilgrim Pierre Caziljc.
The Pope delivers a message on life in France
In France, Léon repeatedly called for a renewed respect for life, in line with Catholic teaching that all human life must be protected and defended from conception until natural death. This teaching translates into firm opposition to abortion, euthanasia and medical assistance in dying.
In Lourdes, where the Church recognized 72 “miraculous” healings as authentic, the question of respect for even the most fragile, the sick and the vulnerable is particularly acute.
“Your crutches, your wheelchairs and your hidden tears are not obstacles; rather, they are the very place where you are fully respected and welcomed,” Leon said in his homily. “Lourdes is a privileged place to profess the beauty and sacredness of life, because life is welcomed here as a precious gift from God. »
Survivors visit Lourdes as part of their healing process
More recently, Lourdes has also become a place of healing for survivors of clergy sexual abuse. Leo had to meet seven survivors later Sunday, including one who was abused as an adult, in recognition of the new frontier of the abuse crisis facing the Church.
The French Church has faced a brutal reckoning over its legacy of abuse. A independent report in 2021 an estimated 330,000 children were abused over 70 years by some 3,000 priests and church workers.
Despite criticism of the report’s methodology and conclusions, French bishops have set up an independent victim compensation system that has so far recommended the Church pay more than 20 million euros ($22.7 million).
In a meeting with French bishops on Sunday morning, Leo praised their response to the victims and urged them to continue. But he also acknowledged that the collapse of priestly vocations in the French Church is linked to scandal, given that the priesthood is now sometimes viewed with suspicion.
“For priestly vocations to flourish, the priest must be welcomed, accepted and loved,” said Léon.
The day Léon arrived in Paris, a group of victims wrote an open letter asking him to acknowledge the Church’s responsibility in the scandal, highlighting what critics see as a conflict of interest in bishops being asked to be both spiritual fathers to their priests and judges when they abuse.
“The Church must renounce its position as both judge and party to the trial,” the victims wrote in the letter published by the French newspaper Libération. The victims also complained that only seven of them would meet Leo, chosen by the Church.
Monsignor Pierre-Antoine Bozo, a spokesman for the bishops’ conference, said Leo intentionally wanted to keep the group small to facilitate an intimate encounter.
“When it comes to listening to them, you can’t have 50 people in front of you,” he said. “So I think that’s really what the pope has chosen: to listen so that we can act and respond more effectively.”
Mosaics are a painful reminder of alleged abuse
In Lourdes, Leon also remembered a thorny abuse case inherited from Pope Francis.
The facade of one of the basilicas of Lourdes was designed by the Rev. Marko Rupnik, a religious mosaicist.
Rupnik is currently on trial in a Vatican court, accused by more than two dozen women of psychologically, spiritually and sexually assaulting them beginning in the 1990s, including during the creation of his works.
His case was suppressed for three decades by his Jesuit superiorsand even Francis was suspected of having protected his fellow Jesuit. In response to the media outcry, Francis ordered a canonical trial in 2024, which is in progress.
The Rupnik case raised the question of what to do with his mosaics, which adorn basilicas around the world.
The bishop of Lourdes, Jean-Marc Micas, decided in 2025 to cover the facade of the Notre-Dame du Rosaire basilica, believing that victims of abuse who come to Lourdes for treatment should not be forced to see them.
On Sunday, Leo made a loop past the basilica in his popemobile, passing the mosaic panels now covered with mustard-colored curtains held together with plastic clips.
In a letter to Leo before his trip, five women who say they were mistreated by Rupnik praised Micas’ decision to cover the mosaics. But they criticized the Vatican’s handling of their case and the three decades it took for them to be heard.
“This prolonged and noisy silence was experienced by us, the victims, as additional and continuous violence,” they wrote.
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Associated Press writer Samuel Petrequin in Paris contributed to this report.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives AP support collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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