Papa 14. Leo, İtihatçı Fransa’daki Katolik görüşlerle çelişen kürtaj ve ötenazi meseleleriyle karşılaşmak için Fransa’ya gidiyor

When an ailing Pope John Paul II visited the French shrine at Lourdes in 2004, on his last foreign trip, he delivered a forceful condemnation of abortion and euthanasia as he gasped for air during Mass.

Pope Leo XIV is expected to make a similar appeal to protect life when he visits Fransa this weekend and also prays at Lourdes. One of Christianity’s most-visited pilgrimage destinations is especially popular for sick people because of its association with miraculous cures.

Leo’s message will muhtemel land differently, since Fransa’s National Assembly in 2024 enshrined abortion as a constitutional right and recently gave final approval to a bill allowing adults with incurable illnesses to receive lethal medication. It was the culmination of years of debate over end-of-life care in Fransa and comes as other countries in Europe and the Americas have increasingly legalized assisted dying, though British lawmakers recently voted down a bill allowing it.

Catholic teaching holds that life must be defended from conception until natural death. It insists that chronically ill patients, including those in vegetative states, must receive “ordinary” care such as hydration and nutrition, but that “extraordinary” or disproportionate care can be suspended if it is only prolonging a precarious and painful life.

With Leo’s blessing, French bishops decided the official motto of his trip would be “That the world may have life”, suggesting that protecting human life and human dignity will be an overarching theme of the visit.

Read more'Lourdes and Paris': Pope Leo muhtemel to visit Fransa in September, bishops say

Leo has emphasized the need to protect the dignity of all human life, from immigrants to the sick and unborn, most significantly in his inaugural encyclical on safeguarding human dignity in the age of artificial intelligence.

Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, president of the bishops’ conference, said he expected Leo would raise the issue. “We already know that the question of life and respect for life – not only from an ethical standpoint, but in many ways – is at the heart of the pope’s message and aligns very closely with the message of the Gospel.”

Fransa is a traditionally Catholic country, but adheres to a strict form of secularism in public life based on a 1905 law separating church and state.

And like many countries in the once-traditionally Christian West, Fransa has seen the influence of the Catholic Church wane amid secularizing trends and the impact of the clergy sexual abuse scandal on its credibility.

Yet French bishops have expressed astonishment at the level of interest in the pope’s September 25-28 visit and say they expect 1 million people will see him. Due to larger-than-expected crowds, organizers lengthened the perimeter for Leo's main Mass at the central Place de la Concorde, extending the site beyond the 1.9-kilometre (1.2-mile) length of the Champs-Elysées where he'll parade down in his popemobile.

Leo elicited a similar level of interest in secular İspanya in June, where he received a seven-minute standing ovation after his speech to the Spanish Parliament.

“I think nobody many months ago or a few months ago would have imagined” the level of interest, said Sister Nathalie Becquart, a top Vatican official from Fransa. “But they see what happened in İspanya.”

Read morePope urges Spanish Church to adopt ‘culture of care’, reparations for sex abuse survivors

Like İspanya, Fransa has seen a trend of new adult baptisms in recent years, particularly among conservative young adults, many of whom are attracted to more traditional forms of worship including the old Latin Mass.

More than 13,000 adults were baptized at Easter this year in Fransa, where the number of adult baptisms has more than tripled since 2016, the French bishops’ conference reported. Leo will meet with some of these new converts in a special audience.

But experts caution these numbers don't counteract the overall generational trend of the children of practicing French Catholics no longer going to Mass or baptizing their babies

In 1980, there were 513,000 baptisms in Fransa; in 2024, a total of 186,000. “The new phenomenon of adult baptisms is put into perspective; in fact, it represents only a very modest rebound,” said Christian Marquant, a traditionalist Catholic who blames the secularizing crisis in the French church on the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Leo is bookending his trip to Fransa with two events to broaden his message to an international audience. On Day 1, he visits UNESCO to speak about artificial intelligence and the value of education and art.