Pope Leo XIV and Europe

During the 2013 conclave, many European cardinal electors likely voted for Jorge Mario Bergoglio, the Argentinian-born son of an Italian immigrant, with the hope that he would bridge Europe, the traditional heartland of the Church, and the Americas, where half of the world’s Catholics live today. Consequently, many European cardinals were probably disappointed that Pope Francis paid so little attention to the Old Continent.

Pope Leo XIV, however, is quickly restoring the importance of Europe, completing highly successful pilgrimages to Monaco, Spain, and France. This is a welcome change, for several reasons.

There is a country where the number of adult and adolescent baptisms has tripled in just four years. The Bible is a bestseller there, as is the pope’s latest encyclical. Priestly vocations are on the rise, while theology is becoming a hot university major, even though enrollment in the humanities around the world is declining as young people prefer to be software engineers or work in AI. Pope Leo XIV’s recent visit to that nation was a smashing success. This country is not Nigeria, Uganda, or the Philippines; it’s not even in the Global South. I’m talking about France.

For anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of history, France has been known for an exceptionally aggressive secularism since the 1789 Revolution. Laïcité has been an inspiration for secularists around the world, not only in the historically Christian West; the founding father of the modern Turkish state, Atatürk, for example, was inspired by the French model to create the first Muslim society with an anti-religious government.

In 1980, Pope St. John Paul II lamented in the homeland of Saints Joan of Arc, Bernadette, and Thérèse of Lisieux: “France, the eldest daughter of the Church, what have you done with your baptism?” Yet the Polish pope did not give up on France, nor did his German successor, who visited the country in 2008. John Paul visited France eight times, more than any nation apart from his native Poland, and appointed masters of the new evangelization, like the late Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, himself a convert from Judaism, as bishops.

Recent developments in France show that paying so much attention to that nation, not long ago a seemingly hopeless case from the perspective of the Church, was worth it. And France isn’t the only European nation where Catholicism is presently on the rise. In Ireland, like France, a nation with strong Catholic roots where the Faith seemed irrevocably lost, Gen Z is more likely to identify as Catholic and attend Mass than the millennial generation. In Spain, meanwhile, the number of young adults identifying as Catholics has been growing. In traditionally Protestant regions like Scandinavia and the UK, the surging number of Catholic catechumens is undoing the revolutions of Martin Luther and Henry VIII. While not impervious to secularism, nations like Poland, Croatia, Slovakia, war-torn Ukraine, and, to an extent, Italy, particularly its southern regions, maintain relatively intact Catholic cultures.

In other words, the Holy Spirit hasn’t given up on Europe. Yet during Francis’ pontificate, one could think otherwise. In 2013, the election of the first non-European pope in centuries was interpreted by many as the beginning of a post-European Church. And Francis acted accordingly.

The Argentinian pontiff made his first pastoral visit to a European country, Albania, a year and a half into his pontificate; this was a matter of historic justice, as the small Muslim-majority nation (which nevertheless has a robust Catholic minority) had only experienced one papal visit, a one-day pilgrimage by John Paul II in 1993. Yet many nations with large Catholic populations and rich Catholic heritage were snubbed by Francis; he never set foot in Austria, Croatia, or Slovenia. Although the state of the faith in Germany is pitiful, almost twenty million Catholics live in the homeland of Benedict XVI; they could use a papal boost, but never got one from Benedict’s immediate successor.

While historically a Protestant nation, the United Kingdom is home to millions of Catholics who had to travel to Rome to see their pope, as did millions of Ukrainian Catholics (Russia’s full-blown aggression began almost nine years into Francis’ pontificate, and prior to that there were no major security concerns to prohibit a papal visit to, say, Kyiv or Lviv). France never enjoyed a proper visit under Francis, who only paid a one-day visit to the island of Corsica (Francis also spoke at the European Parliament in Strasbourg and gave an address on the need to welcome migrants to the Mediterranean bishops gathered in Marseilles, but these two events were closed to the public).

Arguably, the most bizarre snub was that of Spain, home to forty-five million baptized Catholics, the nation that brought the Faith to Francis’ native region of Latin America, and produced countless saints and religious orders, including the Argentinean pope’s own Society of Jesus. By comparison, Benedict visited the Iberian nation three times in his relatively short, eight-year pontificate.

When Francis did visit a European nation with millions of Catholics, it was often not for a pastoral visit but to preside over international Church events, such as the World Meeting of Families in Ireland or World Youth Day in Poland (Francis never even visited Warsaw) or Portugal (Francis also visited Fatima for the centennial of the Marian apparitions in 2017, but this was not accompanied by visits to major Portuguese cities).

During the 2013 conclave that elected Francis, slightly more than half of the cardinal electors were European. Twelve years later, less than forty percent were. And a disproportionate number of European cardinals appointed by Francis were officials of the Roman Curia or diplomats rather than residential bishops; thus, in 2025 such large, ancient European sees as Milan, Venice, Vienna, Kraków, Prague, and Vilnius were without representatives at the conclave.

Leo XIV’s pivot back to Europe is welcome news for several reasons. First, Jesus Himself tells us to “go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). We are to go to the whole world and not ignore any part of it. One could conceivably argue that Benedict XVI, who never made any pastoral visits to Asia, for instance, was a bit too preoccupied with the Old Continent. Yet greater sensitivity to regions of the world where the Church is young and dynamic does not mean that older local Churches should be ignored. Because the Vatican is in Europe, visiting European nations is logistically much easier than Francis’ travel itinerary would suggest.

As a spiritual son of St. Augustine, born in present-day Algeria, Pope Leo XIV knows the fate of the Church in North Africa and Asia Minor. One would not want the same to happen to a continent with such a rich Catholic heritage as Europe. Do we really want the Chartres Cathedral, the Sagrada Familia, or Monte Cassino (and major Eastern Christian sites like Mount Athos) to become mere museums? Of the sixteen Marian apparitions recognized by the Church, all but two (Guadalupe in Mexico and Kibeho in Rwanda) took place in Europe. Who will take be their custodian when the Faith is gone?

Although the Catholic Church in many European countries, most notably France, is experiencing revival today, that Catholic moment needs to be boosted. France’s current dynamism comes after decades of severe decline. The dominant culture in Europe is hostile to the faith. Greater papal attention to the Old Continent can give neophytes, who face numerous challenges, confidence in their newfound faith.

Recently, Africa surpassed Europe in terms of the number of Catholics. More than a century ago, Hillaire Belloc famously wrote that “Europe is the Church, the Church is Europe.” This is no longer the case, which is inspiring evidence that many missionaries have taken Christ’s mandate to preach the Good Word everywhere to heart. Yet Europe is still the home of one in five Catholics, or nearly 300 million souls. In terms of the number of Catholics, South America and Africa are ahead of Europe, which nevertheless remains the home of more believers than Asia, North America, and Oceania. Thus, Europe is still a major center of the Church, and its faithful are too many for their spiritual needs to be ignored.

Today, it is easy to be wowed by the dynamism of the Church in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia and think, to paraphrase Sinclair Lewis, that secularism can’t happen there. Yet as recently as the early 1960s, the Irish, Quebecois, Belgians, and Austrians were just as impressively pious as many Ugandans, Congolese, or Vietnamese today. It is conceivable that in sixty years’ time, congregations in cathedrals in Kinshasa or Lagos could be as sparse and grey-haired as those in Dublin or Vienna today. In fact, South Africa legalized same-sex “marriage” twenty years ago, earlier than most American states and European nations; the DNA of no nation or region is immune to secularism.

Evidence of this also comes from Francis’ native continent. In 2002, Philip Jenkins wrote in The Next Christendom that Europe was no longer the heartland of the Church; in his view, Latin America was a more fitting candidate for that title. Yet the election of a Latin American pope did not reverse the tide of secularism in his home region. In recent years, many Latin nations, including Francis’ native Argentina, have legalized same-sex marriage and abortion on demand. A tangible sign of anti-Catholic backlash, similar to that in Quebec in the 1960s or Ireland in the 1990s, took place in Chile a decade ago, where churches were burned down. In Chile, just over half the population is still Catholic, while more than a quarter of Chileans are “nones.” Going the way of Italy and Spain, once synonymous with large families, Chile and Puerto Rico (which also has the world’s highest sterilization rate) boast some of the world’s lowest fertility rates. Uruguay, meanwhile, is something like a Latin Amsterdam, becoming the first nation in South America to legalize euthanasia and the first in the world to permit recreational cannabis use.

The stunning spread of secularism in Latin America shows that the rejection of faith and morals is not a uniquely European phenomenon. Europe, however, was the first region to experience such an aggressive anti-Christian backlash. Because Europe and the West are the world’s leading regions in terms of economic development and political power, they are often a model for developing countries. Since the West helped get the world into this secularist mess, it would be useful to support those Catholics who are fighting the culture wars.

As Catholic demographics change, no pope can be Eurocentric. But neither can he be Americentric, Afrocentric, or Asiacentric. Today’s Church is well-represented on every continent, which beautifully attests to the universalism of our faith. Yet the recent resurgence of European Catholicism, arguably most evident in France, does not imply that Europe’s Catholic identity is gone. To ignore the spiritual needs of an entire continent goes against the essence of evangelism. It is refreshing that Pope Leo XIV, who, less than a year and a half into his pontificate, has paid successful pastoral visits to three European nations, understands this.

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