On Monday the Pope will be in Metz, in northeast France, where he will pay tribute to Robert Schuman (1886-1963), a founding father of the European Union and a fervent Catholic who is today a candidate for beatification.
The Pope will also meet a group of migrants in Paris, and in Lourdes some victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy.
Born in Chicago in 1955, Pope Leo XIV was originally called Robert Prevost – a French name.
In fact his paternal grandmother was born in Le Havre in Normandy in 1894. When she married in the US many years later she and her Italian husband took the name Prevost, which had been her mother’s maiden-name.
France has a historically complex relationship with the Catholic Church of Rome. The country was long known as the “Eldest Daughter of the Church” because supposedly, but inaccurately, it was the first kingdom to convert to Christianity. Actually Armenia, Georgia and Ethiopia preceded it.
In the 14th Century the papacy came in exile to Avignon in southern France, and over following centuries French armies periodically intervened in Italian politics, where popes were secular rulers as well as heads of the Church.
Napoleon held two popes in captivity.
Recent popes have all come to France, most notably John-Paul II, who came several times between 1980 and 2004, and Pope Francis who came three times, but avoided Paris, going instead to Strasbourg, Marseilles and Corsica.
