Pope Leo XIV Closes France Trip by Urging Faith Leaders to Preach Peace and Revive Europe’s Dialogue
METZ, France (AP) — Pope Leo XIV ended a four-day visit to France on Monday with a pointed appeal to religious leaders: preach peace, reject violence done in God’s name, and recover the cross-border dialogue that helped rebuild Europe after World War II.
The pope traveled to Metz, a city near France’s borders with Luxembourg and Germany, to preside over an interreligious meeting at a conference center named for Robert Schuman. Schuman, a French Catholic statesman and resistance figure, is widely regarded as one of the architects of European unity.
By choosing Metz for the final stop, Leo sought to place his closing message in a region where borders, faith and the memory of war intersect. The setting underscored his broader argument that Europe’s postwar institutions grew not only from economics and diplomacy, but also from a moral choice to replace enmity with dialogue.
Addressing Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and Orthodox leaders, the pope held up Schuman as a model of reconciliation. He said faith leaders share a responsibility to build friendships across borders and to prevent religion from being turned into a weapon.
“Indeed, to invoke God’s name in order to justify violence or oppression is to profane that name,” Leo said. “Religious discourse must constantly call for the disarmament of hearts and words.”
The meeting came as Europe faces renewed strain over war, migration and polarization. Leo has used his France trip to urge the continent to remember its Christian heritage and apply that inheritance to today’s ethical and geopolitical challenges.
His visit also highlighted the complex place of religion in France, a country with a deep Catholic history that is officially secular. Crowds have greeted him at nearly every stop, with 800,000 people attending his Mass on Paris’s Place de la Concorde — a turnout that surprised even organizers.
On Sunday at the Catholic shrine in Lourdes, Leo condemned recently approved French legislation permitting medically assisted dying, calling it “false compassion.” The remark sharpened his message that faith should shape public life, especially at what he sees as moments of moral consequence.
On Monday morning, his Air France charter flight from Lourdes to Metz was accompanied by two French fighter jets. Later in the day, he was scheduled to celebrate Mass at the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Metz.
The cathedral is one of France’s finest examples of Gothic architecture, known for its soaring vaults and stained glass. Some of the windows were designed by Marc Chagall, the 20th-century Jewish artist. The colored glass has earned the cathedral the nickname “Lanterne du Bon Dieu,” or “The Good Lord’s Lantern.”
Schuman’s legacy was central to the pope’s message. In 1950, five years after World War II ended, Schuman proposed the creation of a European Coal and Steel Community that would pool production between France and Germany, historic rivals. The plan rested on the conviction that intertwined economic interests would make another war between them “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.”
That organization became the first in a series of European institutions that eventually led to the European Union. Schuman, who was imprisoned by the Nazis as a resistance fighter, was declared “venerable” in 2021, a step in the Catholic Church’s process toward possible sainthood.
For Leo, Schuman’s example carries a contemporary lesson: dialogue is not a luxury of stable times but a discipline needed when division is rising. In Metz, he asked religious leaders to be peacemakers who disarm hearts and words before conflicts harden into violence.
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