Young Catholics take to Paris streets to welcome Pope Leo XIV
As Pope Leo XIV made his first visit to Paris, members of the French Catholic group Anuncio took to the streets to evangelize, amid a broader rise in baptisms across France.
Pope Leo XIV's first-ever visit to Paris as pontiff drew large crowds to the streets of the Latin Quarter, near Notre-Dame Cathedral. In the courtyard of the Church of Saint-Séverin, around 30 members of Anuncio, a French Catholic organization dedicated to street evangelism, gathered ahead of the pope's procession.
Member Laure D'Haussy said she hoped the visit would "wake France up," describing a difficult national mood and a lack of dialogue among people. Before heading out, experienced members trained newcomers on how to approach strangers about faith, while another group prayed inside the church accompanied by a band playing guitar and keyboard.
Breaking with tradition
Unlike the traditional Catholic approach of quietly spreading faith through schools, hospitals and charities, Anuncio's members engage people directly on the streets. The group is active in several French cities, including Lyon, Marseille and Toulouse, with members meeting monthly to evangelize in public.
The visit coincides with a rise in baptisms in France: 13,000 adults and 8,000 teenagers were baptized last Easter, compared with an average of around 4,000 people per year between 2015 and 2022. Still, France remains a secular country under its 1905 law separating church and state, and affiliation with the Catholic Church has been declining for decades.
On the streets, Anuncio members spoke with people of different ages, including an elderly woman and young students who said they were not religious but wanted to witness the event in person. On Friday, at UNESCO's Paris headquarters, Pope Leo warned of a paradox in the age of artificial intelligence, noting that machines are now credited with "intelligence" while people are increasingly judged by their efficiency. That evening, about 80,000 young people gathered at the Stade de France for a nighttime vigil with the pope.
