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Pope Leo XIV celebrates Mass at the Prairie of the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in Lourdes, France, Sept. 27, 2026. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)

At Lourdes, a refuge for the ill, Pope Leo stands against assisted dying laws


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OSV News Filed Under: Feature, News, Vatican, World News

LOURDES, France (CNS) — At a shrine where the sick and disabled are prioritized, Pope Leo XIV said human frailty can never diminish a person’s dignity, bringing one of the central messages of his visit to France, where the government recently legalized assisted dying.

“Here, no one is turned away due to their frailty,” the pope told an estimated 150,000 pilgrims gathered for Mass at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes Sept. 27.

“Your crutches, your wheelchairs and your hidden tears are not obstacles; instead, they are the very place where you are fully respected and welcomed, and where you can experience a transforming encounter with the infinite love of God.”

The words reflected a central theme of the pope’s Sept. 25-28 apostolic journey to France, whose motto, “That the world may have life,” presented the visit as a call to overcome division and foster what organizers described as signs of “new life in the world.”

Pope Leo told those who were suffering that they are “truly at the heart of the Church.” In a world that places great value on wellbeing and progress, he said, the grotto at Lourdes offers a different measure of the value of human life: one in which each person is welcomed and able to flourish in the love of God.

For nearly 170 years, Lourdes has been associated with healing following apparitions of Mary reported by St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. The sanctuary today draws up to 3 million pilgrims a year, including large numbers of people who are sick or disabled.

Against that backdrop, Pope Leo repeatedly returned to illness, vulnerability and the inherent worth of human life during his time in Lourdes.

Meeting sick people at the Accueil Notre-Dame, a facility at the sanctuary equipped to host pilgrims who are ill or disabled, the pope said the reflection of God can be found in every person.

“This truth is the foundation of our dignity as persons,” he said Sept. 27.

Later, during a torchlight procession and prayer at the shrine, Pope Leo said the light of Christ never abandons the faithful, even when their lives are marked by trials.

“Those who are sick are privileged witnesses to this transfiguration of our lives through faith and love of God and neighbor,” he said.

France’s assisted dying debate

His words carried particular weight in France, where assisted dying has been the subject of a years-long political debate and where a law establishing a “right to aid in dying” was approved in August.

The French National Assembly gave final approval to the legislation July 15 by a vote of 291-241, with 29 abstentions, after repeated disagreement between the National Assembly and Senate. The Constitutional Council upheld the legislation Aug. 14.

Florian Michel, a historian and theologian at the Sorbonne in Paris, told Catholic News Service that the issue has divided France for roughly two decades. President Emmanuel Macron has been a vocal supporter of assisted suicide, and efforts to pass legislation repeatedly encountered resistance in Parliament.

As the debate progressed, Michel said, arguments advanced by the Catholic Church against assisted dying began to gain traction beyond practicing Catholics and helped pull some centrist lawmakers toward opposition.

The French Bishops’ Conference said in July that the consequences of this legislation will be unequally distributed among society.

“The poorest are likely to be the first to pay the price: not wanting to be a burden on their children or grandchildren, elderly people in precarious situations may feel pressured to die,” the bishops’ July 15 press release said.

The Senate rejected the assisted-dying proposal during the legislative process, and a joint committee of deputies and senators failed to agree on a compromise text. Under the procedure provided for by the French Constitution, the National Assembly ultimately had the final say, adopting the legislation in definitive reading July 15.

France joins several European countries that permit some form of euthanasia or assisted dying, including Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain. A number of U.S. states also permit physician-assisted death under varying levels of legality.

Pope Leo has personally intervened in that debate outside France. When Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker visited Rome, the pope said he urged the governor not to sign assisted-dying legislation and later said he was “very disappointed” when his home state approved it.

In France, the Catholic Church was highly mobilized during the legislative debate, organizing prayer vigils and publicly opposing the proposal, Alexandra Maclennan, a religious historian at the University of Caen Normandy, told CNS.

Before its final passage, Pope Leo delivered a strong message against assisted dying June 22, telling members of the Fondation Jérôme Lejeune that “medicine must never become a servant of programmed death.”

“It’s in this context that the pope is coming to give hope and to reassure,” Maclennan told CNS Sept. 18.

That mobilization is welcomed by some young French Catholics.

Domitille Bellery, a young French woman waiting for the pope at the Stade de France Sept. 25, told CNS that it is important for the Church to remain vocal on political issues such as assisted dying because “the Catholic Church should be at the heart of society today.”

“It’s a society that is so lost, and where there is so much sadness, that the Church really should be at its heart so that we can experience peace in the world, so that we know how to live in community and how to live with one another, so that we can help one another and support each other in moments of weakness,” she said.

Carine Diximus, a volunteer during Mass at the Place de la Concorde in Paris, said that France is in a difficult situation politically. She mentioned the euthanasia law.

“That troubles a lot of people,” she said in an interview with CNS Sept. 26.

For her, the pope coming after the passage of this law is symbolic, representing Jesus travelling from town to town in Galilee, and the crowds followed him.

“It’s about showing him that we are here, that we follow him and love him,” Diximus said. “It’s a blessing, and we’re going to make the most of it.”

The Constitutional Council’s approval included protections allowing medical professionals to refuse to participate in assisted dying based on conscientious objection.

“I think the Catholic population welcomed this as a huge relief to have this possibility to object on conscience grounds,” Maclennan said.

Michel, however, said questions remain over how durable such protections will be.

“It is fragile, because it is not written into the law,” he said in a video call Sept. 23. “In two years, in 10 years, in a few years, it can disappear.”

Michel said the Catholic Church has long positioned itself as a “moral conscience of French society” on major ethical questions, but said its intervention in the assisted-dying debate has been different from its role in debates over issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

The Church no longer needs to publicly campaign as forcefully against abortion, he said, because its position is widely known. And revelations of clerical sexual abuse, he said, damaged the credibility of clergy when intervening on questions of sexual morality.

Abuse victims and the pope’s visit

That reality of abuse also hung over Pope Leo’s visit to Lourdes.

Ahead of his arrival, there was anticipation over whether the pope would address the now-hidden mosaics by Father Marko Rupnik at Lourdes’ Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary during his visit. Father Rupnik has been accused by multiple women of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse, and the Jesuit order he once belonged to has said allegations against him were considered highly credible. There is an ongoing trial regarding the accusations within the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

On his final day in Lourdes, the pope met with seven victims of abuse by members of the French Church and clergy. In the two-hour meeting, he privately spoke with each victim and listened to each of their stories, a communique from the Vatican press office said.

In a meeting with the country’s bishops, Pope Leo said they have “taken courageous measures to respond through listening, the search for truth, justice, forgiveness and making amends, and through a firm commitment to a culture of prevention and protection against these crimes.”

However, “you must continue along the path you have begun, maintaining the greatest vigilance,” he told the bishops Sept. 27 at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes. And at the same time, he added, “your clergy need to be supported and encouraged.”

He also stopped before a commemorative plaque ahead of his meeting with the bishops that detailed the feelings of pain and anger felt by abuse victims.

“They will come to understand that an entire institutional culture chose to protect itself instead of protecting them,” the inscription said.

During his Sept. 27 Mass, he spoke of the need for conversion and located the source of evil not in God, but in the human heart.

“How can our hearts not be moved by the conflicts that are spreading and destroying so many innocent lives?” he said. “Yet the evil of our time comes from the human heart. God is not responsible for it.”

Human dignity the focus of France visit

The pope’s emphasis on the dignity of vulnerable people at Lourdes echoed a theme he had introduced from the beginning of his Sept. 25-28 visit to France.

During an evening prayer at the Lourdes grotto Sept. 26, Pope Leo prayed that France’s leaders would be “ready to make sacrifices” and defend fundamental rights.

“May they keep France at peace within the family of nations, and may they make her voice heard in promoting the defense of fundamental human rights and peace in the world, rejecting the mentality of war once and for all,” he said.

Speaking at UNESCO headquarters in Paris a day earlier, the pope explicitly rejected the idea that human dignity depends on health or ability.

“Our dignity is not destroyed by illness or suffering, nor is it dependent upon our abilities. Rather, it calls for loving care at every stage of life,” he told UNESCO staff and leaders Sept. 25.

He also described a human person simply as “someone who is conceived and born,” warning against a society in which a child is regarded not as a gift calling forth care and responsibility but as “a product to be exploited.”

And in his address to Macron, government officials, civil society leaders and the diplomatic corps at the Élysée Palace Sept. 25, Pope Leo brought the principle directly into the political sphere, saying fraternity should teach society “to welcome life unconditionally.”

“That is why I firmly reiterate that the protection of the right to life constitutes the indispensable foundation of every other human right,” he said.

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