At Notre Dame de Paris, Pope Leo XIV told French clergy and religious to embrace “missionary conversion,” saying the rebuilt cathedral should spark a new push toward holiness and daily mission.
Seven years after the fire, he cast the restoration as a chance for encounter with society’s peripheries, arguing a simple, welcoming Church presence can help heal France’s divided and wounded communities.
Leo also said Notre Dame and every church exist first for prayer and worship, warning that “without the liturgy” a church “loses its soul.”
He urged dignified, reverent celebrations even in small communities, backed Vatican II’s liturgical reform, and told clergy to put communion with the pope and the wider Church ahead of personal preferences.
The appeal tied the cathedral’s physical rebirth to a broader renewal of the Church in France, with Leo presenting liturgy and mission as twin pillars of that revival.