Despite his request to do so, French President Emmanuel Macron will not join Pope Leo XIV at Notre Dame according to information shared by a French Catholic paper.
Leo XIV’s upcoming visit to France at the end of the month is set to be an immense affair, both in scale of attendance and organisational logistics. Around half a million people are expected to attend his outdoor Mass in Paris on September 26 and registrations for the tickets dried up within hours.
The Pontiff will spend three days in France, arriving first in Paris before journeying to Lourdes and finally Metz. While the Lourdes events will be among the most prominent of the papal voyage, so also will Leo’s visit to the recently rebuilt Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris and it is here that the Vatican has drawn a firm line.
The Vatican correspondent for the French Catholic outlet La Croix reported this week that Macron had asked to show Leo around Notre-Dame privately, but has been refused. Leo is due to preside over Vespers in the cathedral on the evening of his first day in the country.
According to La Croix, Macron had requested to take Leo aside prior to Vespers in order to show him around the church in its newly restored stated. “The request went through diplomatic channels. The Secretariat of State of the Holy See answered no.”
Notre-Dame is owned by the French state and received funds from the government for its restoration. In light of that, Macron might well feel entitled to lead Leo on a tour of the building the president owns and funds. But the French state is not solely responsible. Private donations flooded in to cover the more than €700 million required, with €200 of those coming from Bernard Arnault, whom Leo received in private audience at the end of August.
Nor is it to be understood as a blanket ignoring of the president. Leo will meet with Macron at the start of the voyage when he visits the president at the Élysée Palace. The official schedule includes 45 minutes for the Pope and president before Leo then addresses the assembled civil authorities in the Élysée Palace, at which Macron is also expected.
The Pontiff’s Apostolic Journey to France is short but immensely busy and it is squeezed into a packed schedule in Leo’s autumn calendar, which will also see him hold a number of engagements at the Vatican in early October before heading to South America in November. France being included on the calendar at all at this stage is believed to be at the firm lobbying of the French episcopate, especially the bishops’ conference president Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline.
The necessarily packed nature of Leo’s visit to France was cited by the Secretariat of State as a factor in declining Macron’s request to show Leo around Notre-Dame. So also was the Secretariat’s desire for the church to be “returned to the faithful at the end of vespers”.
Speculation will abound prior to the voyage itself regarding whether the Vatican’s decision was primarily concerned with sticking to schedule or if another message was being sent. Leo’s voyage to France comes at a particularly sensitive time for the Church given that just weeks ago the nation passed an assisted suicide law after many years of debating over such measures in parliament.
Papal trips are very carefully timed in order to avoid giving the impression of endorsement of any particular individual – such as around or just after a national election – or the approval of some policy. Leo’s trip was confirmed in May and with the assisted suicide law taking effect at the end of August he now must walk the delicate line between the gracious visitor and the disapproving pontiff.
The denial of Macron’s request could arguably be viewed as an exercise of the Vatican’s displeasure and an attempt to limit any signs of undue warmth shown to the president. But one source cited by La Croix downplayed this idea, saying that Macron was “asking for something that belongs on another trip”, namely that he was anticipating a state visit rather than an apostolic visit.
Certainly the itinerary of Leo’s time in France is very much oriented to the pastoral side rather than the state element of a trip. The amount of time spent at Lourdes reveals this, as does the priority of visiting Notre-Dame to spend time with the Catholic community there. Both sites are key for French Catholics and Leo’s dual visitation demonstrates to the national Church that he is keen to prioritise them.
Notre-Dame especially holds immense significance, given that Pope Francis declined an invite to attend its grand reopening in 2024, but instead took a day trip to Corsica a week later to participate in a meeting of popular religions.
The voyage also fits with Leo’s style of visiting those who have felt somewhat aggrieved at not receiving what they deemed to be a merited papal visit under the last pontificate. Readers will have seen early this year that the Catholic Herald predicted Leo would visit Argentina in order to, essentially, give locals the visit that Pope Francis never afforded his homeland.
France also suffered from a papal snub under Francis. There is a strong current of thought that Francis bizarrely ignored the eldest daughter of the Church as he never made an apostolic voyage there. Instead, he visited Strasbourg in 2014 for mere hours to address the European Parliament, then Marseille in 2023 for an overnight stop to meet the national episcopate. In many ways, therefore, France is keen to receive the papal visit which for some reason Francis never undertook.
Leo XIV formally received Macron in a private audience on April 10 of this year, after having met previously before Leo was elected Pope.
Some weeks earlier a viral social media post from an anonymous account had spread fake news with the rumour that Leo had refused to meet Macron to show his personal displeasure at stained glass windows in Notre-Dame and the euthanasia bill. In reality, meetings between Leo and Macron planned for October 2025 and then January 2026 were unable to take place due to diary constraints on both ends. The French Foreign Ministry firmly denied reports of a diplomatic rift as fake.
The build up to Leo’s trip to France has thus been far from smooth and the passage of the assisted suicide bill over the summer adds a dark and unwelcome element to the trip which many Catholics hope the Pope will address directly.
What is clear is that the Holy See are keen for the brief journey to remain firmly an apostolic and pastoral trip rather than a state voyage.
Michael Haynes is an English journalist in the Holy See Press Corps. He serves as Vatican Correspondent for the Catholic Herald, while readers can follow him at Per Mariam and on X @MLJHaynes.
