Pope prays at Lourdes after huge Paris mass

Pope prays at Lourdes after huge Paris mass

LOURDES, France – Pope Leo XIV prayed for France on Saturday at its holy shrine in Lourdes, after riding along the Champs Elysees in the popemobile and holding an emotional open-air mass in front of hundreds of thousands of worshippers in Paris. The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics is on a four-day trip to France, a secular country with deep Catholic roots, on the first official papal visit there in nearly two decades. In the southwestern pilgrimage town the US pontiff prayed at the G