A moving, historic and game-changing papal pilgrimage to France

“Incredible! I don't know about you, but I am so moved to see what the Pope's visit means in France. He is being received almost like a rock star, but I think it would be a mistake to dismiss this simply as celebrity. In one of Europe’s most determinedly secular cultures, enormous crowds are turning out to see an elderly man dressed in white who comes speaking unapologetically about Christ, the Cross, holiness, vocation, human dignity and eternal things. Last night, 80,000 young people packed the Stade de France and chanted “Leo! Leo!”; today, some 600,000 people registered for the great outdoor Mass.

“You cannot say that does not tell us something vital!

“Secularism may have succeeded in pushing Christianity from much of public life, but it has not abolished the human hunger for transcendence. We still want to know what life means, why we are here, what is good, what is worth sacrificing for and whether death has the final word. Consumerism, politics and technology can occupy us; they cannot answer those questions & we recognise that is what the Pope represents.

“And there is another remarkable dimension to these images. Regardless of what the sedevacantists argue, here is the Bishop of Rome travelling through France and being received quite unmistakably as the Pope. Not merely as another religious leader, but as the successor of Peter. For us Catholics, there is something wonderfully tangible here about Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18. The papacy is not an abstraction or an internet theory. Peter has a successor, he has a name and a face & billions recognise what that office represents.

“And then there is the extraordinary “soft power” of the Holy See. Leo can speak with presidents and diplomats in the morning, address UNESCO, enter Notre-Dame, fill a national stadium with young people and place questions of peace, human dignity, faith and the common good before an international audience within hours.

“Very few human beings possess a platform remotely comparable to that.

“Which is why the papacy matters so enormously. Used well, its moral authority can reach far beyond practising Catholics. What we are seeing in France is not merely the popularity of Pope Leo XIV. It is a glimpse of the extraordinary missionary potential of the Petrine office itself. The world may call itself secular. It does not appear to have stopped searching for God.”

Mark Lambert @sitsio

French Muslim group targeting traditionalist Catholics admits defeat after Pope Leo visit

THOMAS EDWARDS

SEP. 26, 2026

 

A French Muslim group focused on sharing Islam with traditionalist Catholics has lamented Pope Leo’s visit and admitted Catholics are better organised and more determined and predicted that France will become Catholic again

A group of French Muslims, who describe themselves as an “association sharing the message of Islam with non-Muslims, particularly traditionalist Catholics”, has lamented the papal visit to France and said that France will once again become Catholic.

Miséricorde pour l’Humanité France, meaning Mercy for Mankind France, posted on X that they felt like a “CIA agent helplessly witnessing the return of the Soviet Union”. The group further predicted: “In 45 years, France will become Catholic again, and we’ll be left with nothing but our tears.”

The post further explained that “the Catholics are much better organised, as well as more determined, than us Muslims and even than the Zionists; you have to know how to recognise the strength of the Catholic international.” The group concluded the post by declaring that “the American Catholics will now flood the world with their soft power, to the detriment of both Muslim spiritual hegemony in Western Europe and the Zionist lobby.”

Miséricorde pour l’Humanité France primarily exists as an online group. On the group’s YouTube page, they organise debates on common talking points around Islam today, for example Muhammad’s consummation of his marriage to Aisha when she was just nine years old, violence in Islam and the Quran’s historical context. These feature the group debating popular internet Catholic apologists such as Abbé Guy Pagès.

Another video uses John Henry Newman’s theory of doctrinal development to argue that Catholicism is the strongest form of Christianity, but claims that Vatican II’s teaching on religious liberty represents a rupture with earlier Catholic doctrine and therefore disproves Newman’s theory, undermines Catholicism and Christianity as a whole, and leaves Islam as the more doctrinally consistent alternative.

An additional video, entitled Les catholiques traditionalistes américains reviennent de loin!(American traditionalist Catholics have come a long way!), argues that traditionalist Catholics in the United States have gone from being a marginalised minority with severely restricted access to the traditional Latin Mass to becoming an increasingly organised and influential movement.

The group’s assertion that France is in the midst of a Catholic revival is, to some extent, supported by facts. At Easter this year, there were 13,000 adult baptisms, a 270 per cent increase in just five years, with the largest cohort, 42 per cent, aged between 18 and 26. The combined number of adult and adolescent baptisms exceeds 20,000. Comparatively, there are an estimated 3,000–5,000 conversions to Islam in France per year. The statistics are even more favourable to Catholicism when one takes into account that there are also conversions outside the Easter Vigil. Alongside this, Islamic conversions, whilst many may be sincere, require only a simple profession of faith, known as the shahada, whereas Catholicism requires an extensive period of discernment and engagement with the Church.

However, due to high immigration and fertility rates, the Islamic population of the country has more than trebled since 1970, and the religion enjoys strong intergenerational transmission, meaning most people raised Muslim remain Muslim.

However, another factor to be added is the huge growth of traditionalist Catholicism in France, the branch of the Faith which the group particularly targets. This group functions in terms of fertility and intergenerational transmission at a level which is as strong as, or exceeds, that of Islam.

The religious makeup of France remains dynamic, with immigration and a rebellion against the state’s imposed secularism remaining significant factors. The coming years will show which religions are the big winners from religious shifts, but this week certainly showed the country’s Catholicism in full force.

Thomas Edwards

Editor of Advaticanum

Priests are not “social workers”

"Before long we shall have priests reduced to the role of social workers and the message of faith reduced to a political vision."

- Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI), "Faith and the Future," 1969.

September 24th issue: The Wanderer Catholic Newspaper

 

Subscribe: https://thewandererpress.com/subscribe-to-the-wanderer-2/

Cardinal Pizzaballa and the two-state solution

Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, is sounding the alarm over the rapidly deteriorating situation in the West Bank, where escalating Israeli settler violence against Palestinians is taking place amid little effective security or legal accountability.

He described the West Bank as a “lawless land,” warning that settler aggression against Palestinians continues without effective security or legal restraints.

His message is clear: what is happening is not a series of isolated incidents. Israeli settler terrorism has become an ongoing reality in the West Bank, tensions continue to rise, and the lack of meaningful restraint or accountability is making the situation increasingly dangerous.

He also called for greater international diplomatic engagement, rejected the dehumanization of either people, and reaffirmed the two-state solution as the path forward for Israelis and Palestinians.

@IhabHassane

Last Spring,the most popular course at Yale was “Thr Catholic Intellectual Tradition”

“Last spring, the most popular history course at Yale was The Catholic Intellectual Tradition, a survey of Catholic thinking and writing from the first century to the present. It beat out such popular, evergreen classes as The Birth of Europe and The Roman Empire. I was asked to assist with this 85-student course as a teaching fellow. Each week, after scrolling past calls to defund the humanities and to automate the many jobs that make a liberal arts education possible, I found myself surrounded by eager students ready to engage with fourth-century Christology, medieval mysticism, World War II–era debates over “just war” theory, and much more.”

I Teach at Yale. There Are Gen Z Catholics All Around Me. I Know What Must Be Done.

Universities need to do more to connect with an increasingly religious student body.

BY SERGIO INFANTE

AUG 27, 20261:37 PM

Photo illustration by Slate. Photos by Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images and thinkomatic/iStock/Getty Images Plus.

More: https://x.com/slate/status/2093030881074012171?s=46&t=IydJ-X8H6c0NM044nYKQ0w

TODAY: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen Beatification

Livesreamed here at 2 pm:

https://www.celebratesheen.com/