Happy as Leo XIV in Europe! (1)

1 October 2026 Press Review

Four days, five stops, a press corps mobilized across the globe. Le Monde counted 2,500 accredited journalists in the Paris press center alone, and many countries broadcast the visit live. Around 800,000 people at the Concorde, up to a million and a half French people who came to meet the Pope over the four days, according to the Vatican: every newsroom sent its best writers. Comparing them, one thing stands out — they tell, with the same facts, different journeys.

The Essentials

  • Around 800,000 people attended Saturday’s Mass at the Concorde; the Vatican puts the total number of people who came to meet the Pope over the four days at one to one and a half million.
  • The French press is split on how to read the phenomenon: Le Figaro sees a Catholicism healed of its « unhappy identity, » while Le Temps speaks instead of a « militant Christianity » once again « infusing » France.
  • Emmanuel Macron, who had stayed away from the first three Masses, changed his mind « on the spot » Monday morning to attend the one in Metz.
  • His closing line in Metz — « happy as Leo XIV among us, » built in three steps from an Ashkenazi saying, then a German one — ran through the entire press.
  • The German and Austrian press sees in the trip a moral counterweight to Donald Trump.
  • In the United States, CNN writes that « it’s hard not to see him as a counterweight to Trump, » while the Irish Times mainly highlights his praise of European multiculturalism against the rise of the far right.
  • On Europe, the French press almost unanimously notes his warning against rearmament.

by Joël-François Dumont — Paris, 29 September 2026.

One Journey, Four Readings

The healer pope. For sociologist Yann Raison du Cleuziou, interviewed by Le Figaro, “Leo XIV has healed French Catholics of an unhappy identity” [03]: the end of a feeling of persecution, a Catholicism that leaves behind its inward-looking habits without curling back up on itself. Jean-Pierre Denis, in the same paper, sees the American pope as having come to “observe a rediscovered Christianity” amid the ruins of Christendom [13]. Historian Gil Mihaely, in Causeur, sums up the shift in a phrase that will last: “the shift from a Catholicism received as heritage to a Catholicism increasingly chosen” [14].

The pope who divides without meaning to. Taking the opposite view, Guilherme Ringuenet writes in Le Temps that this trip saw a “militant Christianity” once again infusing France, carried by Vincent Bolloré’s media empire and by a militant youth that has swapped Islam in for communism as its designated enemy [04]. The same issue gives the counterpoint to Paul Piccarreta, of the magazine Le Cri, who instead sees an opportunity for left-wing Catholics to regain visibility [04].

The unifying pope. Michaela Wiegel, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, picks a different angle: she describes a “Generation Leo” reflecting the full diversity of French society, and a show at the Stade de France designed by someone close to traditionalist circles, where a comedian of Algerian descent poked fun at stereotypical “cathos” — a sign, she says, that “every strand is there” [07]. Le Monde strikes the same note: at the Concorde, the Archbishop of Tours, Mgr Jordy, observes that the fervor the Pope sparked “goes well beyond Catholics” [15].

The counterweight pope. This is the reading that runs most consistently through the foreign press. Wiegel writes that “the American pope forms a moral counterweight to the American president, whose politics of war, rejection of multilateralism, and deregulation of artificial intelligence only further unsettle the world” [07]. CNN goes further, quoting his line on the erosion of international norms: “Today, relations between individuals and states are becoming increasingly uncivilized […] The value of keeping one’s word is dismissed; instead, people boast of lies and deceit” [09].

A Fifth View: the Catholic Right

A rooted pope. Valeurs Actuelles chooses an angle no other outlet develops: the Pope’s own genealogy. In a profile by Bertille Vaur, “Leo XIV, a Father’s Gaze,” the magazine reveals that his French roots are not only Norman, as the German press had written, but also from the Béarn region: a genealogist reportedly found that his family owned land at Ossun, near Lourdes, where the papal plane landed “on land tied to his ancestors.” Before a painting depicting his great-grandfather’s baptistery, the Pope is said to have had this moved reaction: “Oh my grandmother’s father.” The magazine also notes his humor, rare in the press we consulted: to Cardinal Aveline, who had just given a long presentation on the Church of France, the Pope reportedly said: “You’ve said it all. I shouldn’t have spoken, because now I have nothing left to say.” [20]

La Croix, Two Days, Two Tones

Monday, September 28, before Metz. Even before the Lorraine stop, La Croix devotes most of its issue to a pope who, it says, has stopped being a stranger to the French. Jérôme Chapuis’s editorial notes an unusual style, “a mix of gentle firmness and quiet radicalism.” Mikael Corre’s account returns to the Élysée scene, where the Pope denounces, under the chandeliers, “the offer of a programmed death” in front of Emmanuel Macron: “The Pope speaks of an ‘offer,’ as if it were a product, placing it alongside surrogacy and organ trafficking,” the paper writes, quoting Senator Laure Darcos, present in the room, who calls it “a very diplomatic criticism.” On secularism, La Croix notes that Leo XIV coins his own formula rather than reusing those of his predecessors: “the just secularism of the earthly City.” At the Stade de France, the paper quotes in full the Pope’s teaching drawn from the First Letter to Timothy: “Fight the good fight of the faith (…). Our only weapon is love that gives itself.” [21]

Tuesday, September 29, after Metz. The next day, La Croix’s headline reads “In the Heart of the French,” and it publishes the Europe speech in full, boxed in the paper. Chapuis’s editorial shifts register: it no longer describes a style, but asks what will remain. “The snapshot of emotion is now, from today, succeeded by a work of maturing,” he writes, warning against a return to “the spirit of chapels” once the faithful go home. [21]

What the Foreign Press Sees That France Doesn’t Say

Thomas Jansen, in his FAZ editorial, notes an irony the French press did not point out: “it took a citizen of the United States becoming head of the Catholic Church to rehabilitate Europe” — a break from Francis, whose line about a “tired grandmother” Europe had wounded even within Catholic ranks. The Irish Times frames the Metz speech as praise for multiculturalism delivered “as the far right gains strength across Europe,” quoting: “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.” Die Presse, finally, picks a word no one else highlights: Begegnung, the encounter, which it presents as the true thread running through the whole trip, not just Metz.

Perhaps a Turning Point

Every channel, every newspaper reported on this visit day after day. There was a widespread sense that something was changing, or might change — a turning point, a resurgence, an affirmation, perhaps a rebirth, without anyone being able to say which word fits best. The Pope himself, back in Rome, spoke of “rebirth” regarding the rise in adult baptisms in France. And what if that were exactly it? Impossible to say more, but the impression seemed shared by everyone who followed these four days: this trip will have consequences, in the medium or long term — no one, for now, can say which.

Among weekly magazines, however, the contrast is stark. Four titles covered the event and gave it ample space: Paris Match, Le Figaro Magazine, La Croix L’Hebdo, and Valeurs Actuelles. The others chose different editorial priorities — a way of erasing the impact, in France, at a particular moment, of a papal visit unlike any in a very long time. Le Nouvel Observateur put the left-wing primary on its cover, Le Point chose Javier Milei, L’Express chose Putin’s threats: three legitimate subjects perhaps, but none urgent enough to eclipse an event of this scale, followed and broadcast around the world.

There is something rather comical, at bottom, in this silence. In 1799, deep in the Egyptian campaign, cut off from the world, it was an English commodore, Sidney Smith, who took the delicate care of sending Bonaparte a Frankfurt Gazette — a German newspaper, delivered by a Briton, so that a French general could learn what was happening… in France. Proof that traditions, sometimes, are passed on better than news.

In France, even if people are reluctant to admit it, the gaze foreign observers — even close ones — cast on the country is closely watched, to get the full, “unvarnished” picture, to borrow a phrase dear to satirist Laurent Gerra.

Joël-François Dumont

Notes

[01] Le Figaro, Tuesday, September 29, 2026, editorial by Vincent Trémolet de Villers and pp. 1-5. ↩

[02] Vatican figures, used throughout the press from September 29. ↩

[03] Le Figaro, Tuesday, September 29, interview with Yann Raison du Cleuziou, p. 4. ↩

[04] Le Temps, weekend of September 26-27, Guilherme Ringuenet, “When ‘militant Christianity’ infuses France again,” p. 4. ↩

[05] Le Figaro, Tuesday, September 29, “Politicians facing the aftershock of the Pope’s visit,” p. 4. ↩

[06] Le Temps, Tuesday, September 29, Paul Ackermann, “Europe is worth a Mass.” ↩

[07] Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tuesday, September 29, Michaela Wiegel, “France’s Generation Leo,” and Thomas Jansen, editorial “A Pope with a Heart for Europe.” ↩

[08] Die Presse, Tuesday, September 29, Almut Siefert, “Pope: ‘Relations between states ever more barbaric,’” p. 3. ↩

[09] CNN, September 28, 2026. ↩

[10] The Irish Times, September 28, 2026. ↩

[11] Ouest-France, Tuesday, September 29, Laurent Marchand, “Leo XIV extols the Europe of peace,” p. 5. ↩

[12] Le Figaro, Tuesday, September 29, Renaud Girard’s column, “Pope Leo XIV’s international message in France,” p. 17. ↩

[13] Le Figaro, Saturday 26-Sunday 27 September, Jean-Pierre Denis, “Amid the ruins of Christendom, Leo XIV came to observe a rediscovered Christianity,” p. 18. ↩

[14] Causeur, September 27, 2026, Gil Mihaely, “What Leo XIV’s visit says about French Catholicism.” ↩

[15] Le Monde, Tuesday, September 29, “The pontiff as unifier at the Concorde,” p. 9. ↩

[16] La Croix, Tuesday, September 29, p. 8. ↩

[17] Le Monde, Tuesday, September 29, p. 9; Le Temps, Tuesday, September 29, Paul Ackermann, p. 4. ↩

[18] Speech by Leo XIV, Metz, September 28, 2026, “To the Roots of Europe for Peace and Unity,” vatican.va. ↩

[19] Speech by Leo XIV at the Stade de France (September 25) and at the Bakhita House (September 25), vatican.va. ↩

[20] Valeurs Actuelles, Wednesday, September 30, 2026, Bertille Vaur, “Leo XIV, a Father’s Gaze,” p. 24. ↩

[21] La Croix, Monday, September 28 and Tuesday, September 29, 2026, Jérôme Chapuis (editorial) and Mikael Corre. ↩

See also:

Decoding — A Finding

At the end of this review, one finding emerges, which every partial reading hinted at without ever spelling it out fully: this pope won over France — and beyond — through three paths at once, rarely found together in one man.

His approach, first. Every source converges on this point, from Wiegel at the FAZ to Die Presse, by way of the testimonies gathered at Lourdes and at the Stade de France: he listens before he speaks, he looks before he judges. This is not a communications detail, it is a method of contact — and it, more than his speeches, seems to have touched the most people, believers and non-believers alike.

His vision, next. An American pope who comes to remind Europe of its roots, not to enclose them but to open them up; who places Schuman and Saint Benedict in the same sentence; who refuses, in Jean-Marc Sauvé’s words, “to define himself against adversaries,” while carrying, by that same witness’s own admission, a message “anti-Trump and aimed at all extremists.” A vision that holds together what many thought could not be reconciled: faithfulness to a heritage and openness to the other.

His method, finally — the most distinctive of the three, and the one the press struggles most to name in a single word. Criticizing without ever naming anyone; saying divisive things without their seeming divisive; leaving it to each listener to recognize their own target in a sentence that names no one. It is an art of political understatement whose precise mechanics we tried to reconstruct in our second piece — so much did it seem to us that no outlet we consulted had followed the thread to its end.

Approach, vision, method: the three feed one another, and it is probably their combination, more than any one taken alone, that explains what the entire press, from Paris to Vienna, ended up noting with a mix of surprise and admiration — that one man, alone, in four days, managed to bring together what no politician had managed to unite in a long time.

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