Cardinal Aveline: 'Pope Leo XIV comes to give us a roadmap for continuing our mission'
By Jean-Charles Putzolu
“A great joy” for the Church, for France, for French Catholics, and an encouragement for a Church striving to meet many challenges—some aimed at turning the page on difficult moments, others at accompanying the stirrings of renewal, seen in the growing number of catechumens and increasing interest in pilgrimages.
This is how the Archbishop of Marseille and President of the French Bishops’ Conference reacted to the confirmation by the Holy See Press Office of Pope Leo XIV’s Apostolic Journey to France from September 25 to 28.
Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline spoke to Vatican News about how the Church in France has reacted to the announcement and what they are expecting from this visit.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Q: Your Eminence, what is your reaction to the announcement of this trip, which you yourself had mentioned some time ago, saying you hoped it would happen?
I welcome this announcement with great joy. We had hoped and waited for it, as I have already said. From the time of the Pope’s election, we discussed the possibility of a visit to France.
I was able to observe how personally committed he was to this project. He never missed an opportunity to send small messages of encouragement to priests or for particular events.
I believe I can say, after working with him several times on this matter, that there is a genuine concern and affection for our country—for what it represents, for its history, and for the way it has radiated throughout the Church and the world through great figures of holiness.
At the same time, there are the challenges facing the Church in France today, which are shared by other countries but also have unique characteristics. I think this is excellent news not only for the Church in France, but also for our country.
Q: On March 28, Pope Leo XIV was in Monaco. The French closely followed that visit. You concelebrated at the Louis II Stadium. What do Catholics in France expect from a visit by Pope Leo?
Catholics look forward to a papal visit—they came in large numbers to Marseille, Corsica, and also Monaco—because the Church in France is experiencing very contrasting realities, but also many beautiful things, such as the growing number of young people discovering Christ and asking the Church for baptism or confirmation.
I am currently in Lourdes with 1,500 pilgrims from the Diocese of Marseille, and among them are many young people and young adults who have discovered Christ and for whom this is their first pilgrimage.
I am personally struck by these extraordinary developments, which require the Church in France to organize itself well in order to meet the challenge.
The Provincial Council of Île-de-France, to which I hope the Pope will be able to speak, is one of the initiatives we are trying to undertake precisely to address this challenge. There is also a question of formation and of accompaniment.
Alongside these beautiful developments, we also see a resurgence of pilgrimages and the growing importance of Marian shrines in our country.
There are also more delicate issues. For example, in rural areas, I see communities that are aging. The Church in France is also facing this reality.
We have lived through the crisis of abuse and sexual assault in the Church. It is not over; there is still much work to do and much respect to express.
The Pope is very aware of all this. He is therefore coming to listen to us, encourage us, and also give us a roadmap so that we may continue our mission in communion with the universal Church.
All of this is very important, and I think four months is not a lot of time to prepare for this visit.
Q: You mentioned, Your Eminence, the difficulties the Church in France is working to overcome. Do you see this visit as an encouragement for all the work that has been done to address these difficult issues?
Yes, I can see this in the various occasions when I had the opportunity to prepare for this trip personally with the Pope. I can see that it is in this spirit that we have already begun our work.
We will continue, but I think it is also important that the Church in France recognize the grace being given through a visit from the Successor of Peter.
We need to prepare ourselves; we need to reflect on what we are living through. We must clothe our hearts and allow the Holy Spirit to clothe our hearts, because we need to be open to what this papal visit will bring us—to his words and his message.
We must also prepare ourselves so that we can clearly explain to him what we are experiencing, so that he may fully understand and internalize it, and then, through his ministry and teaching authority, provide us with a roadmap for the years ahead.
Q: The Holy See has not yet published the program of this visit. However, in an earlier statement, the Church in France said it expected the Pope both in Paris and Lourdes.
Yes, that is what is planned. It is very important that the Pope be in Paris. He will also go to the UNESCO headquarters, and he is also expected to visit Lourdes - another important stop.
There is still a little room left in his schedule, and we will see how things can be organized. Preliminary visits will be carried out shortly, and they will allow us to better assess the feasibility of additional events.
Let us not forget that this trip is very short: from September 25 to 28. Afterward, the Pope will certainly have other opportunities to come to France, if God grants him life and health.
Q: A speech is planned at the UNESCO headquarters, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. In his first year of pontificate, Pope Leo XIV has spoken several times on these themes, highlighting the fundamental character of education, the complementarity of science and faith, and presenting culture as a bridge toward fraternity and peace.
This planned meeting at UNESCO reflects important themes for the Church that intersect with one another. For example, the relationship between faith and reason—a topic Pope Benedict XVI strongly encouraged us to work on during his trip to France in 2008. Then there is the Church’s social doctrine, which also concerns the concrete expression of Christian faith in daily life.
UNESCO is also about education. The Church in France has decided to devote three years to working on the theme of education because it touches on many issues, particularly families. It is an extremely important subject not only for the Church but for French society as a whole.
The approach we have undertaken—and which I had the opportunity to explain to the Pope—is both to examine the treasures of the Church, especially through its many educational congregations such as the Salesians of Don Bosco and others, which we must share, and also to review what we have done with these intuitions, including the areas where we still need improvement. We have a great deal of work ahead.
Our initiative seeks to invite other actors in the educational world - who do not necessarily share the Christian faith - to sit at the same table and discuss the challenges facing education today.
UNESCO, which brings together science, culture, and education within an international institution, represents a very important stage at a time when the principles of international law need to be reaffirmed.
Q: France next September will be Pope Leo XIV’s fifth apostolic journey, and already his third in Europe—this Europe that is living through a troubled and perhaps pivotal period in its history. We see this through the complex fragmentation of the world and the multiplication of wars. What message can we expect Pope Leo XIV to give regarding Europe?
We will listen to what he wants to say to Europe. A papal visit to a country is both a message to the Church and people of that country, and also a message to the universal Church and to all men and women of goodwill around the world.
In our country, we have been marked by wars in Europe, but also by the incredible strength of reconciliation as a path to peace after the immense destruction caused by successive wars.
This experience in twentieth-century Europe—with the worst atrocities we know—did not prevent a process of reconciliation from developing to the point that it became the origin of an economic and political project carried forward by men who were themselves Christians, such as Alcide De Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer, and Robert Schuman, among others.
The Christian inspiration made it possible for reconciliation between peoples who had fought several wars against one another to become the driving force behind the construction of a political project, even if that project does not always live up to the original intuition that gave birth to it.
I think this is important today because of the context in which we find ourselves, and the Pope has emphasized this repeatedly. We must work for peace and build upon this European experience, which, while not unique, is highly significant. We must highlight the importance of Europe’s witness and the power of reconciliation for the building of peace in the world.
