Paris Mass

Pope Leo XIV said Mass Saturday at Place de la Concorde in Paris, before a crowd the Vatican said blew past every registration estimate. Numbers varied widely. The Associated Press and BBC News both put the count at 700,000. The Los Angeles Times counted 800,000, some 200,000 more than had signed up in advance. NBC News put pre-registration at about 600,000.

Guillotines executed prisoners at Concorde during the French Revolution, and the square now anchors France's secular republic symbolically, the Guardian reported. Some defenders of France's strict church-state separation laws objected to holding a papal Mass on that ground, according to the Guardian. It was day two of a four-day visit, Leo's first to France in 18 years.

Leo rode the Champs-Élysées in an open-topped popemobile before the Mass. He waved to the crowds and paused to touch babies lifted toward him, the Associated Press and NBC News reported. His homily urged Catholics to share their faith rather than keep it private. "Let it overflow, so that those you meet may be refreshed and their thirst satisfied," he said, adding a prayer that "the living water of the Holy Spirit may flow throughout France."

Roughly 14,500 police officers, gendarmes, troops and firefighters guarded the event, the Guardian reported, with snipers on rooftops and a security perimeter spanning roughly 1.4 miles. Emmanuel Macron skipped the Mass, avoiding any appearance of breaching France's separation of church and state, BBC News reported. Brigitte Macron, his wife, attended, along with Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and presidential hopefuls Marine Le Pen and Bruno Retailleau, BBC News said.

Friday drew a vigil of 80,000 people. Leo praised young people's "enthusiasm, energy and commitment" to the church there, BBC News reported. He also warned against "losing our humanity amid a paradise of machines" in remarks on artificial intelligence, according to BBC News. Adult baptisms in France have tripled since 2016, to about 13,000 this year. That figure still trails the 513,000 recorded in 1980, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Lourdes comes next. 150,000 people have registered for a Sunday Mass there, BBC News reported. Monday takes Leo to Metz, to honor Robert Schuman, a Catholic founding figure of the European Union.

"You don't hear much from us Catholics, but now we're going to make some noise," said Sylvie Leclerc, a 51-year-old teacher in the crowd, according to the Guardian.