(OSV News) — Pope Leo XIV’s Sept. 25-28 visit to France is expected to be watched closely for his message to a Europe divided by political tensions and a recent wave of laws that undermine the dignity of life.
But the most fundamental message of the visit may not come from the splendidly renovated walls of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris or the streets of that City of Lights.
It may come from Lourdes — a famed Marian shrine that has always been a primary place of welcome for the sick and those in need, and which has become a refuge for victims of clerical sexual abuse.
OSV News discussed the pope’s upcoming visit to the Marian sanctuary with Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes. Pope Leo will arrive in Lourdes from Paris on Sept. 26 and will concelebrate Sunday Mass Sept. 27 on the meadow facing the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.
Papal visit an ‘honor, pleasure’
Asked how preparations are going and about the emotions in Lourdes ahead of the papal visit, Bishop Micas said, “It’s a very big emotion to welcome the pope here in the sanctuary of Lourdes. He will be the third pope welcomed here … and it’s really an honor, a pleasure, and a very, very, very, very big emotion.”
While there are “a lot of parameters to cross” ahead of the papal visit organized in just a few months, Bishop Micas said that “it’s a lot of work, but many, many, many people are very, very happy to be involved in it.”
The Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes can accommodate 170,000 pilgrims for the papal celebrations, Bishop Micas said.
The Lourdes shrine includes the grotto where St. Bernadette witnessed 18 Marian apparitions beginning on Feb. 11, 1858. People then witnessed physical and spiritual healing miracles after visiting the site, or drinking or washing in the spring Our Lady pointed Bernadette to in an apparition.
The pope’s day in Lourdes will begin with an early morning visit to the grotto, Bishop Micas told OSV News, followed by the central point of the day: Mass in front of the grotto. In the evening the pope will lead a candlelit rosary.
Asked whether Pope Leo will meet with pilgrims who are sick and seeking healing at Lourdes, Bishop Micas replied: “Of course — he will meet the realities of Lourdes, and sick people are among the most important of them.”
Covering Father Rupnik’s mosaics
Bishop Micas is not only a bishop attending to papal preparations. He is the man who, urged by testimonies of victim-survivors of sexual abuse, in March 2025 covered part of the large-scale mosaic artwork created by disgraced priest Father Marko Rupnik, a former Jesuit.
The gesture made headlines around the globe.
Father Rupnik’s mosaics are displayed on the front wall of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, one of three basilicas on the sanctuary’s grounds. The mosaics were commissioned from Father Rupnik in 2008, 14 years before accusations against the then-renowned artist were made public. They were installed on the century-old basilica to mark the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of Our Lady. They portray the luminous mysteries of the rosary that St. John Paul II instituted in 2002.
Asked whether the pope will visit the inside of the basilica — and encounter the covered mosaics — Bishop Micas told OSV News that the core of the visit to Lourdes is “not really (about) the visit of places, but really meeting people” and that the celebrations are likely to be held outdoors to accommodate large crowds.
Asked the symbolism of the pope’s visit to a place that has covered Father Rupnik’s mosaics, Bishop Micas said the pope “didn’t choose Lourdes for that reason” but “to be a pilgrim in Lourdes and to do what all the pastors of the Church do when they are in Lourdes.” When Bishop Micas invited the pope, “he said immediately: ‘Oh, yes, I will come because, well, Lourdes is Lourdes.'”
Bishop Micas was clear, however, in the sanctuary’s meaning for victims of clerical sexual abuse.
“I realized when I arrived as bishop of the place, that Lourdes is Lourdes because of the Immaculate Conception,” said Bishop Micas, who was installed as the bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes in 2022. “Lourdes is considered as a very important place by victims of sexual abuse … because with the Immaculate Conception, they can find consolation and maybe some cure.”
Knowing that abuse victims of clerical sexual abuse come to Lourdes searching for healing, and recalling a recent visit to the sanctuary by Sister Samuelle, a French mosaicist and one of Father Rupnik’s alleged victims, Bishop Micas said that “after having received and listened to some people being victims of sexual abuses,” he understood “it’s just horrible” and “it’s a scandal” that victims could feel deterred from visiting the grounds due to the display of an alleged abuser’s mosaics.
In covering part of the mosaics, the bishop sought to alleviate that concern for some pilgrims, he explained.
“This is my mission here,” he said, noting that did not want the mosaics to be a roadblock for people who wanted to visit Lourdes. “What happened (was that) it was just impossible for people (to feel they could) … pass through the mosaics to reach the grotto, to get into the basilica.”
“So this was the point,” he continued, speaking about covering the mosaics. “My mission is to allow anyone to get into the sanctuary and to go to the grotto … to get consolation after what they lived (through). It wasn’t that easy, but it was obvious this is what has to be done.”
He also shared how survivors’ testimonies compelled him to make the bold move of covering them. Besides for the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, no other major sanctuary in the world with Father Rupnik’s mosaics has covered the artwork.
Decisive moments of discernment
Two experiences in particular motivated Bishop Micas to cover the mosaics. The first was Feb. 12, 2023, at 4 p.m. “I do remember the precise moment,” he recalled.
He met an English woman who had been a victim of sexual abuse who welcomed people into Lourdes’ baths, where people immerse their whole body into cold waters from the site’s original spring, and where many claim to experience healing from their diseases or ailments. She explained to him and the shrine’s rector that many women who have experienced abuse visit Lourdes for healing. After allegations against Father Rupnik came to light, she said it was “impossible” for some victims to visit the shrine, the bishop recounted.
“And this was a very, very, very moving moment between us,” he told OSV News. “She was so quiet. She wasn’t angry, but she was very serious.”
Bishop Micas recalled the encounter as “such a deep moment together.”
The second moment came roughly six months later, he said, “when I received victims of Marko Rupnik himself” just after the bishop announced he was forming the commission to discern the fate of the mosaics in the famed Marian sanctuary.
Bishop Micas spent a Friday in Lourdes with them, and “they told me their story with Marko Rupnik … how he abused them,” he said, emphasizing that they described the abuse taking place in “the process of the making of the mosaics, on the places where they were creating the mosaics.”
“This gave me a new look on our mosaics in Lourdes,” he said.
The two meetings, he said, were “the foundation for my conscience about my responsibility in Lourdes considering these mosaics,” and that the positive reaction the decision received “showed me we were right to do what we did at that time. And we have to continue.”
Meeting with the pope
When in France, Pope Leo “will probably meet abuse victims,” the bishop said, “and this meeting is being prepared by the national committee,” a central body based in Paris organizing the visit on behalf of the French bishops’ conference. The meeting will likely take place in either Paris or Lourdes, he said.
The official program of the visit of Pope Leo in France will be published in early August and “we hope it will be possible to say that this meeting will take place,” he said.
Asked about recent rumors — which the Vatican has sought to dispel — that Father Rupnik may be acquitted in a canonical trial underway at the Vatican for the alleged abuse, Bishop Micas said, “I wasn’t happy of course, but anyway, it doesn’t make any change for me.”
“The reason for my decision is what the presence of these mosaics provokes in the heart and in the life of people that have been abused,” he said.
Asked if the mosaics would remain covered if the judges do not find Father Rupnik guilty of a canonical crime, Bishop Micas said, “It is not that easy — a judgment of guilt or innocence.”
“Innocence would be to say that all the people who said what they said were liars,” he said. “And I don’t think they were liars.”
Compassionate approach
Asked about bishops that do not share his approach toward victims of sexual abuse, Bishop Micas said: “I’m not in their conscience and in the reasons of their decision or action or non-action,” and added that “my conviction is it will take a very, very long time to change a culture — because it’s a question of culture.”
He said that while he faced some backlash for his decision to cover the mosaics, many of those opposing the move at the time have changed their minds.
“I’m confident this conversion is still possible for many others,” he said. “We go step by step because I don’t want to cause a kind of scare in the Church, and add violence to violence.”
He stressed that “the mosaics of Lourdes are not big at all. There are so many places where there are square meters much more important than what it is in Lourdes. But Lourdes is a symbol, and I covered only the doors of the basilica.”
He continued: “I’m very, very moved and touched how this symbol works for victims. And I think the little we did bear fruits of consolation and of what the Church can do, and should do more.”
Bishop Micas said he sees abuse victims as “beloved brothers and sisters — and more beloved, because they are so hurt and they need my love like any of the people” in his care. “But because they are so hurt, then they deserve more attention and more love,” he said.
Bishop Micas said it is important for bishops “to meet abused people and to listen to them without saying a single word. Even if they shout, even if they’re very angry, because the bishop is a symbolic person.”
It is important therefore “not to answer immediately, but just listen and let them (be angry), because it’s not at this man (the bishop) they are angry, but about the Church this man is representing for them and the authority of the Church who never listened to them, (or) allowed them to talk. And that’s all,” he said. “Now they can talk, so just listen to them.”
“And if you want to cry, just cry with them,” he continued. “It’s not a sign of weakness, but just a sign of compassion and love. And that’s human. Let your heart be human.”
Asked whether he has cried with victims of abuse, Bishop Micas answered: “Oh, yes. Several times.”
Decisive moral momentum
Pope Leo is coming to France after the National Assembly in a watershed vote for the nation on July 15 legalized assisted dying, including euthanasia and assisted suicide in certain cases.
Asked what the papal trip can give France at that moment, Bishop Micas said, “It’s always a question of life and the message of the Gospel — carried by saints, carried by Mary to some people, carried by the Church, by the pastors of the Church.”
“So of course the pope will do in France what he did in other places,” he said. “He will talk about the Gospel, he will teach the Gospel, and the Gospel speaks about life.”
Bishop Micas emphasized Pope Leo “will talk to the people who live here in France.” Those who “will reproach the political dimension of his speech” need to understand that it is not “political speech, but just a teaching of the Gospel.”
“The value of life doesn’t depend on human conventions between deputies or between politics,” he said. “When we are believers, we receive what God reveals to us about what is a human being, what is life. It’s his point of view we should adopt, and not our point of view we should impose. And this is — I hope, I’m sure — (what) he will explain to us.”
He also stressed that Lourdes may be a place where the strongest pro-life message will be conveyed.
“If he talks about this question in Paris, it will be interpreted as a political speech, because Paris is the capital of the country where the laws are voted on,” he said. “If he speaks and says exactly the same thing in Lourdes, it will be the word of a pastor and of a believer. It will be received in a different way.”
Bishop Micas said after what the world saw of Pope Leo’s visit to Spain in June, he expects in France “the joy and the enthusiasm will be the same. We feel it here,” he said, with excitement and anticipation for the first papal visit in Lourdes in 18 years.
Paulina Guzik is international editor of OSV News. Follow her on X @Guzik_Paulina.
