by Marie-Lucile Kubacki
Paris – Historian Martin Dumont has just published a book on the long history of relations between the popes and France .
On the occasion of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to France, Dumont retraces the key stages in this relationship, from the expression describing France as the “eldest daughter of the Church” to the reflections of successive popes in the face of the transformations of French Catholicism. In his view, Leo XIV’s visit takes place in a France that has become, in Pope Francis’ words, “a periphery to be evangelized”, but also in a context in which Catholicism itself is being redefined.
Through the history of papal visits, Martin Dumont thus highlights a common thread that remains relevant today: beyond defending a cultural heritage or or influence, the vocation of the Church in France is to rediscover a “new missionary impetus”, drawing from its spiritual treasures in order to proclaim Christ and serve peoples.
Your book retraces the long and often turbulent history of relations between the popes and France. In the light of this history, what are the signs of the times that characterize Leo XIV’s visit compared with those of other Bishops of Rome?
If we think of Francis’ visits to Marseille in September 2023 and Ajaccio in December 2024, the issues at stake are different, even though Francis’ Corsica and Leo XIV’s visit to the Shrine of Lourdes are more closely connected than one might think, thanks to popular devotion.
The real historical leap can perhaps be seen by comparing it with Benedict XVI’s 2008 visit to Paris and Lourdes. Religious practice had already declined sharply by 2008, but the figures have not improved since then, making France today “a periphery to be evangelized”, in Pope Francis’ words.
Pope Leo’s visit, however, takes place in a particular context, both with a presidential campaign approaching that is expected to be particularly tense, and with Catholicism itself undergoing a process of reorganization and being marked by contradictory currents.
At the same time, it is well known that Leo XIV is an Augustinian, whose pontifical program is centred on peace – and whose spirit can be summed up in the expression “two hearts in one”.
France has long been described as the “eldest daughter of the Church”, an expression that is debated today but remains present in the Catholic imagination. What does this formula reveal about the evolution of the relationship between the Church of Rome and contemporary French society?
“The eldest daughter of the Church, but not the most faithful,” Pope Francis said in 2016, somehow summarizing Rome’s approach through the use of a historically outdated expression to offer praise or admonition to the Catholic people of a beloved nation.
As for the monarch, once described as the “the eldest son of the Church” under the Ancien Régime, the expression itself emerged in the nineteenth century from the writings of Frédéric Ozanam, one of the founders of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, and later through the preaching of Father Henri-Dominique Lacordaire at Notre-Dame.
Popularized by Pope Leo XIII in 1896 on the occasion of the 14th centenary of Clovis’ baptism, it became, for Rome, a way of acknowledging the successive changes of political regime in France while continuing to address the Christian people in these terms: political regimes pass, while believers remain, to be exhorted or encouraged to remain faithful to Christ and to the See of Peter.
Beyond relations between the Holy See and the French state, what have been the most significant moments during the visits? Which words of the popes have helped awaken Christian consciousness?
The first thing that naturally comes to mind is John Paul II’s appeal at Le Bourget on 1 June 1980: “France, eldest daughter of the Church, are you faithful to the promises of your baptism?” The phrase still resonates today, so often has it been recalled.
But other moments have marked papal visits: from Benedict XVI’s call for “positive secularity” at the Élysée Palace in 2008 and his remarks on the role of Christianity in European culture in his address at the Collège des Bernardins that same year, to Francis’ indignation in Marseille at the “globalization of indifference” in the face of the growing number of migrants dying in the Mediterranean.
There was also John Paul II’s tribute to freedom of conscience in the face of totalitarian regimes in his address to UNESCO in May 1980, and the wordless speech conveyed by Benedict XVI’s emotion during his visit to the home of Bernadette Soubirous’ parents.
France’s missionary history has profoundly shaped Catholicism. Leo XIV comes from the United States, and from a different missionary history, although one that was initially marked by a certain French influence. In the light of these two parallel histories, what words might Leo XIV address to the Church in France?
It may be useful to look at Pope Leo’s personal history and at Libres sous la grâce, a collection of writings by the then Father Robert Prevost.
In 2003, at the opening of a meeting of the Augustinian circumscriptions of Europe, he said that he felt “a certain reluctance to speak too much, since I am not European – may God preserve us, one might think, from an American telling Europeans what they should think!”
Now Prevost has become Pope, and the French in Paris and Lourdes, as well as Europeans in Metz, will have to listen to him!
But it would be more appropriate to consider things in the light of his experience in Peru and as Prior General of the Augustinians, immersing oneself in Prevost’s writings.
In particular, there are his words in Brno in September 2006 on the closeness of the shepherd to peoples and Christians, the meaning of prayer and the importance of not looking back; or his statement that “mission is not success, but the proclamation of the Kingdom”, delivered in his homily in Biñan in September 2010.
This is often forgotten: forty years ago, John Paul II had already expressed this idea in Lyon, following in the footsteps of Paul VI: “Church of France, allow yourselves to be challenged by the young Churches, those which your missionaries went to establish. Perhaps they have a new impetus to offer you!”
In your book, what is the main lesson that the history of relations between the popes and France offers for the Church’s mission today?
Perhaps a kind of synthesis can be found in the Message sent by Leo XIV to the bishops of France in May 2025 on the occasion of the centenary of the canonizations of Jean Eudes, Thérèse of Lisieux and the Curé of Ars. In it, he urged French Catholics to take an interest in their history and draw from their spiritual treasures in order to inspire a “new missionary impetus”.
Indeed, the various appeals addressed from Rome to the “eldest daughter of the Church”, from the future Pius XII at Notre-Dame in 1937 through to Pope Francis and Leo XIV, have had no other purpose than to underline this point: France’s “vocation” is first and foremost spiritual and charitable, devoted to proclaiming Christ’s love for humanity.
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