The Vatican confirmed Saturday that Pope Leo XIV will travel to France for a four-day visit from September 25 to 28, his fourth foreign trip of the year and one that includes a stop at the Paris headquarters of UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency.
The visit to France adds a major European engagement to a travel schedule that already has Leo visiting Spain and the Canary Islands in June, and that earlier this year took him to Monaco and to four African nations in April. The late Pope Francis, by contrast, famously stayed away from the large Christian centers of Europe during his 12-year pontificate, preferring instead to travel to small Catholic communities far from Rome.
With the France trip now confirmed, Leo appears to be paying more attention to the experience of European faithful, amid anecdotal reports of renewed interest in the faith among young adults. The stop at UNESCO will also give the pope a global audience in a year in which he decided against traveling to his native United States, where he could have addressed the U.N. General Assembly as past popes have done.
Francis visited France on two occasions — a day trip to Strasbourg in 2014 to address the European Parliament and Council of Europe, and a visit to Marseille in 2023 for a conference on migration — but never made a state visit to Paris.
Still unconfirmed is a possible trip to Latin America, including Leo’s beloved second home of Peru, later in the year.