The Pope Calls for the Fight Against the "Plague" of Sexual Violence and Rejects Euthanasia

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Pope Leo XIV, from the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes on the third day of his visit to France, called on the country's bishops to "continue" the struggle against the "painful plague" represented by crimes against children in the church, reiterating his opposition to euthanasia.

After more than a million people participated in the mass he held in Paris, about 150,000 people gathered to attend an outdoor mass in Lourdes at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains.

Pope Leo XIV, like Benedict XVI in 2008 and John Paul II in 1983 and 2004, held a massive mass at the Shrine of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes, which attracts a large number of visitors.

During his multiple interventions on Sunday, he addressed many controversial issues in the eyes of the Catholic Church, most notably euthanasia, secularism, and Catholic education. He had previously sent messages in this regard on Friday to French President Emmanuel Macron.

At the end of the mass he presided over at the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, Pope Leo XIV called on "all believers and all Christian communities to recite the Rosary during the upcoming month of October, with a special intention that wars may cease, and that peace may prevail among warring peoples."

The Pope said during his visit to a center in Lourdes for the sick and disabled, "I know that the horizon may seem dark and unclear, and there may seem to be no way out for some of you, due to certain diseases and sometimes terrible pains. However, no human law should make you lose confidence in your dignity. On the contrary, in the name of this inalienable dignity that every human being possesses, the temptation to end life under the pretext of false compassion must be firmly rejected."

He emphasized that "it is impossible to consider ending life as a natural matter. What the law permits is not necessarily moral."

Pope Leo XIV also addressed the issue of sexual violence within the church in Lourdes, a matter of great importance in France where a report released five years ago revealed that 330,000 minors had been subjected to such acts since 1950.

The Pope had called on the bishops of France during a closed meeting to "continue" to confront the "scourge" of sexual violence "with greater vigilance."

The Pope concluded his day with a special meeting with seven victims of sexual violence who praised the initiative that was approved by Leo XIV in the context of the wide scope of this scourge, according to one of the attendees.